


Memento Vivere

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Series: Magic [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, James Bond - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canonical Child Abuse, Dark Magic, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Hogwarts, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, It's the whole seventh book, M/M, Magic, Racism, Sequel to Docendo Discimus, Sexual Content, That ought to cover it, Torture, Unforgivable Curses (Harry Potter), and Alea Iacta Est, not even kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:51:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 41
Words: 118,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dark Lord has risen. Magic and Muggle worlds are colliding. Dumbledore is dead. The Ministry is inches away from collapsing. Harry Potter has a mission that was left for him by Dumbledore. Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour are about to get married.</p><p>Q Bond, né Holmes, is the quartermaster for the Order of the Phoenix.</p><p>Sequel to Docendo Discimus, and Alea Iacta Est.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It is finally here - apologies for the delay, but this story is absolutely massive, and has needed a decent amount of organisation to follow the original HP canon. I hope it is worth the wait. This story picks up directly from where Iacta left off.
> 
> Due warnings: this story will track into Hogwarts, into the Wizarding world under the control of Voldemort. As such, there are many warnings in play. Most are found in canon already, but some are divergent, and are more explicit than found in the books. Please take heed.
> 
> Other than that - enjoy! Jen.

The staff room was flooded with people.

Mycroft was presiding, naturally, mostly because nobody could stop him. Nobody especially wanted to. Kingsley was predominantly concerned with the Muggle Prime Minister and other vital figures; there had been some unspoken agreement, therefore, that Mycroft would be taking over running of the Order, at least until further notice.

Sherlock had curled up, beetle-like, in the corner of the staff room. He was tangibly, painfully unhappy with being there; the anger rolled off him in sharp waves, an angry, angular aura that begged attention and nobody cared much about. Petulance was not precisely welcome, in the existing climate. There was no time.

Bond had immediately slid in the role of second-in-command. He was only a month or two Mycroft’s junior, and one of the most experienced wizards present; Remus was in too tremulous a position given his werewolf status, and Tonks was just a little too young.

On a personal level, Q didn’t want to attempt control of the Order. Organisation had never been a speciality, and what was more, he counted himself among the Hogwarts Staff more than he did the Order; Minerva, Filius, almost all the Hogwarts staff were technically Order members. Their priorities remained with the students, however. Their priorities always _would_.

As yet, Q had no idea quite how he would make it clear that if it came to it, his loyalties would always be to Hogwarts. Hogwarts had sheltered him, protected him. His name, his past, his _everything_ had never mattered; in Hogwarts, he had always simply remained Q, and nobody had hurt him for that. Magic had echoed through the walls, and he had been safe.

Arthur Weasley arrived, just as Mycroft was completing a calm explanation of the state of Hogwarts defences. “The Ministry are livid, they’re attempting to seize Dumbledore’s possessions, potentially interviewing Harry…”

Harry, the Weasley twins, all of their friends; they had disappeared to their respective Common Rooms, with ghosts, portraits or teachers ensuring they remained there. Q had briefly spoken to his various painted allies; it was unlikely that Harry would decide to run off, but definitely not impossible.

“Do we have any news on infiltration?” Bond asked, tone efficient and curt. “This would be their opportunity, if the Death Eaters wanted to effect a Ministry takeover; can we get increased monitoring?”

Mycroft allowed a slight nod. “We need to expand the influence of any contacts we have. We may also need to withdraw known high-ranking Order members from the Ministry itself, or we will risk assassinations. Nymphadora, that particularly refers to you, given that you have a familial connection…”

“Tonks, Mycroft, come _on_ ,” she corrected, hair bristling very slightly. “I think you’re right though. We have friends in Scrimgeour’s office, we’ll need to up on Pius Thicknesse and ones like him…”

“Can I leave you in control of that?” Mycroft asked her, waiting for her nod before continuing: “Go now. Use Q’s phones, only owls if you absolutely must, there should be enough circulating to get the message out. I want Order members or sympathisers contacted _now_. Do not leave the castle.”

Tonks slipped out of the staff room, Q’s eyes tracing, smiling despite himself as she knocked into the doorframe on her way out; she had been one of the only Order members to be given a Nokia. Most of them had something a little flashier, but given Tonks’s propensity for damaging everything in the vicinity, it seemed most sensible to give her something indestructible.

“As to the new numbers of Death Eaters…”

The tension in Sherlock’s body was tangible; Q had never been told that there was a history in his family, that there was anything to know about James Moriarty. Like most of the Wizarding populace, Q had kept a healthy enough eye when news hit of the Muggle murders Moriarty had been responsible for, but to understand that _Sherlock_ knew him too was a little beyond what he had anticipated.

Bond, meanwhile, was carefully quiet with his jaw very tight. He and Q were standing apart from one another, in a way that was just a fraction too pronounced to be unnoticeable.

When Sherlock beckoned Q closer, he moved without question, leaving Bond behind. Sherlock proceeded to nod at the chair next to him, wordlessly retracting his feet; from Sherlock, it may as well have been a love poem – he never relinquished his chairs – and Q quite contentedly sat himself down. “Q, how are your developments going insofar as the Internet is concerned?” Mycroft asked abruptly.

Q glanced over with tangible surprise, mind working quickly to catch up. “Still in development – Muggle systems can be extremely frail, and subject to interference if they know anything about computers, I’m trying to create a Fidelius Charm in technological format – but I have a database in construction, and a form of chat room, for want of a better phrase.”

“The Fidelius charm concept would presumably work on more than just the chat room setup?”

“In theory.”

Mycroft nodded. “Make that a priority. Bond, do we know how Vesper Lynd is still alive?”

The hush that fell on the room was spectacular.

Those who knew James Bond knew of Vesper Lynd, at least in passing. He had never spoken a word on the subject, really, since her death, but her files were extensive and the stories expanded through Ministry cabinets and Unspeakable whispers.

Bond had done a number of extraordinary things, horrible things, for the Ministry of Magic. Bond had thrown worlds out of balance and followed orders throughout, had slept with and killed and hexed and Obliviated and seen things, done things. Bond had seen buildings explode with Muggle bombs and Wizard curses, lived to straddle the edge of Muggle and Wizarding worlds, and keep the peace in any way he knew how.

Voldemort was not the only wizard who had ever dreamt of superiority, of dominance. Wizards were born with a power, and could choose to use it however they wished; on the side-lines, unseen, wizards like James Bond worked to keep those away from public sight or mind. They worked, tried, to convince the Wizarding world that the evil was rare and anomalous, by cutting away aspects of Wizarding that couldn’t exist for peace.

That job, by necessity, took broken people and broke them further.

Vesper Lynd had changed _everything_.

“As far as I was concerned, she has been dead for five years,” Bond said to the room at large, not needing to raise the volume overmuch.

It was extremely evident that he had no intention of saying another word. He briefly flicked a glance at Q, who didn’t look up, expression remaining the embodiment of neutrality. “Bond, are you going to be stable?” Mycroft asked frankly, the question everybody was wondering: there was no point having Bond present, if he could not be depended upon to make those decisions.

Bond was silent for a moment, and Q remembered his wand flying from his fingers _I’m sorry_ and knew, and what was more, knew it would be a cold day in hell before Bond admitted it.

Thus, Bond nodded, and Q shut off emotion for a minute because being angry would definitely not help the situation as it stood.

“The next issue: Draco Malfoy,” Mycroft noted, to the room at large; naturally, in an instant, all attention swung back to Q.

He let out a slight sigh, trying to find the right words to justify a rather reflexive decision. “Draco has been extremely, visibly distressed throughout the year,” he said carefully. “He is a child, you all must agree – he is far too young to be involved so heavily in this. Harry mentioned that he tried to kill Dumbledore, for Merlin’s sake. He needs our help.”

Remus was watching Q with nothing short of admiration. Q glanced over – the man had been a teacher once too, after all, and Q knew he had loved it – and was met with a light nod of agreement. It was very nice, Q mused, to know that he did have _some_ support.

Mycroft nodded slightly. “I agree entirely. We will now be considering Draco Malfoy under our protection.”

“The family…”

“Is out of our hands,” Mycroft completed, without undue apology. “Their decisions are those of an adult. Draco is working under very different parameters. Naturally, we will make an effect to locate them – but we cannot waste resources and time on a family we know are heavily associated with Dark forces.”

Q wanted to object, but there was something in Mycroft’s expression that stalled him, not to mention that the conversation was shifting into a new area. “Sherlock, John. Obviously, both of you are in a quite considerable amount of danger; we will need to relocate you both as soon as possible. Sherlock, given Moriarty…”

“I know,” Sherlock returned curtly, and closed himself off.

Mycroft let out a slow breath. “Realistically – we need to establish your safety as a matter of relative urgency. The Death Eaters will target you to make an example of, and the Ministry will be unsafe before long.”

Arthur Weasley burst through the doors. “Molly?” he asked immediately, locating his wife; she stood, quickly coming over and letting her husband wrap her in his arms, the closest most had seen Molly Weasley come to breaking down. “Molly. It’s alright. He’ll be alright, he’s alive, we can deal with the rest. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

At the other end of the room, Remus was clutching onto Tonks’s hand like a lifeline, and she held on back, an anchor in the chaos.

Abruptly, the rest of the teaching staff appeared, a somewhat formidable mass; even Slughorn was present, along with Aurora, Pomona and Minerva, Charity Burbage, Rolanda Hooch. “The school is remaining open,” Minerva announced tiredly. “I will be standing in as Headmistress for the time being. The Ministry are deeply unhappy, and will almost certainly be posting their own people into the school – I will do all I can to vet them, but they are trying to go over my head. Albus was always better at this.”

With that, Minerva sat down in a chair, lips non-existent given how tightly they were compressed, and held herself together as best she could.

“The news has been published widely now,” Aurora supplemented dully. “The funeral arrangements are pending.”

Mycroft nodded sombrely, and sighed slightly. “I would like to suggest that we go our separate ways for the time being,” he told them. “We will need a patrol; Sherlock, John, I would recommend that you remain in the Hospital Wing for now, John, you may be of some assistance…”

“Horace, say a single word and I will hex you,” Q supplemented with dangerous quiet, as Slughorn’s expression turned deviously interested; he retreated with a slight flush, blustering pointlessly and being universally ignored.

“… and we will have a somewhat complex handful of days,” Mycroft completed.

“I’m staying on patrol,” Minerva stated, quite categorical; Aurora nodded in agreement, as did the entire staff body.

Mycroft raised an eyebrow, very aware that no power on the earth would compel Minerva to leave. “Admirable zeal, but we need to organise shifts. Minerva, Aurora, Arthur and myself will remain for now. Charity, Rolanda, Remus, Tonks – you will switch in at eight o’clock this morning. Q, in Filius’s absence, you will be filling in as the head of Ravenclaw, I would recommend speaking to the students now, and then get some rest. Similarly Horace, you will need to be Slytherin’s. Bond, Molly, I will speak to you in a moment.”

Everybody nodded, and dispersed about their various locations; Mycroft spent a moment discussing precisely what the students would be told, before dispatching the Heads of House. Bond, Molly and Mycroft exchanged a handful of words – Q assumed concerning the Burrow – before Q disappeared towards the Ravenclaw common room.

He reached the top of the stairs, and waited for the riddle, adrenaline keeping his heart pounding at a faster rate than he knew could exist.

_I am a scream, a lie, a transaction, salt water, peace._

Q considered for a moment, and the answer struck him breathless for a moment with its sheer appropriateness. “Grief,” he murmured.

 _Yes_ , the familiar voice agreed, voice cracking in a slight sob, before Q was granted entrance.

Unsurprisingly, every student was awake and waiting. Exhausted first-years in pyjamas up to frightened-looking seventh years who understood that there was some danger, something unknown, which had incarcerated them in their dormitories for the time being; Q looked over them, and tried to find words.

“All of you,” he managed. “I am currently standing in as Head of Ravenclaw House, as Professor Flitwick is indisposed for the time being. As you know, nobody is to leave the dormitories.”

A breath, an intake, and _Merlin_ but Q didn’t want to actually say it aloud, as though he could deny it if the words remained unspoken. “As I’m certain some of you are aware, Professor Dumbledore died this evening,” Q stated simply.

The response was a rumbling disbelief, pain, grief. “How?” asked a host of voices, mostly older years.

“He was murdered,” Q told them honestly; the news would spread soon enough, there seemed little point denying it. “I have no doubt that your families will be making imminent contact. Some of you may be taken home. If that is the case, you _do not leave_ without informing somebody, preferably me. There will be a school assembly in the morning at nine – I will be collecting you, from here, at that time, and nobody leaves before. Could I have a word with all sixth and seventh years?”

The upper years peeled off, attentive, some pale and some stoic, all wide-eyed. “I need you to take care of the younger students,” he told them simply. “This will be difficult for them. Prefects, you have my permission to leave the dormitories, _if_ necessary, if any member of staff is required. Is that clear?”

All nodded, and Q felt remarkably thankful for the common sense of his students. They simply got on with matters with minimal fuss, and went to comfort the youngest members of the school, ready to take action.

Q considered heading to his room, but honestly, sleep was unlikely to come when he was alone; the Hospital Wing would probably be a better place, weighed with sleeping patients and also with the potential for Poppy to hand him something, just to help. Just as _something_.

He entered, to find an extremely unhappy Sherlock yelling at Molly Hooper, the Healer from St Mungo’s who had been talking to – and teaching – John about Wizarding medicine. Q had absolutely no idea what she was doing in the Hospital Wing, he had to admit.

John was doing an admirable job attempting to placate Sherlock, who had descended into somewhat unfocused ranting. “… if somebody like her can break into the building, is it surprising that…”

The words rippled off, and Q remained quietly unsurprised.

Albus Dumbledore had been important, and grief does curious things, especially to those who try to believe they are untouchable. Sherlock would go to his grave denying the existence of his emotions.

The Holmes parents had died within a year of one another.

Q had hurt, naturally, but he had been disowned as much as Sherlock had – and honestly, knew he was the forgotten child. Mycroft was mercurial and extraordinary, Sherlock was just a _nightmare_ , and Q remained quiet and placid and was only noticed by virtue of no longer being there.

As far as Q believed, Sherlock had learnt to foster little more than hatred for their parents.

It thus came as something of a surprise, when Sherlock managed to throw himself into an absolute tailspin, screaming out at the world and everything in it when he found that their father was dead.

Their mother banned all three children from the funeral. Q dealt with it through magic and something approaching functionality – he was in Hogwarts, he was looked after, loved – Mycroft escaped through his work, and Sherlock dealt with it by breaking everything in the vicinity. No fragile items were left in Mycroft’s flat.

Ten months later, and Sherlock cried when their mother died. For almost two solid weeks, in fact.

The anger dissolved and was cried out, cried out until there was nothing left but a shell of a once-proud Holmes, and he stood and accepted and straightened and refused to speak about it again.

It thus came as very little of a surprise to find Sherlock dealing with grief in his customarily atrocious manner. The difference was that this time, Q knew all too well just how much damage could be done, with Sherlock’s magic breaking out of him; anger and pain and want and need had caused so much hurt, so many times.

It was a testimony to how hard Sherlock had been working, that there were no outbursts. Channelling his magic intelligently, safely, had helped to the extent that now – in more emotional pain then he had been in a good while – he was alright. “Sherlock, I’m sorry,” Q told him softly.

His brother looked at Q with a hurt that Q simply hadn’t expected. “He understood,” Sherlock told him simply, sharply, with razors lacing his voice. Q could feel all breath leave his body in a rush, as Sherlock ran hands through his hair, no longer concentrating, trying to suppress the want, the _need_ , to break things and hurt things, make the world understand a fraction of his pain.

Q was grieving the loss of somebody who had supported him, who had made him safe, who was an emblem of the fact that they could win. He had never known Dumbledore that well, but the man had done more for him, for his family, than Q could wrap his head around.

Sherlock had been saved by the man, very directly and painfully literally, and he was gone.

“He wouldn’t have wanted you to be like this,” Molly said softly, from behind him; Sherlock twisted, and Q wanted to warn her that Sherlock didn’t have the control to not simply hurt her.

John spoke quietly, standing by Molly. “Sherlock. You know she’s not going to cause harm. It’s Molly, for god’s sake,” he stated with intentional control.

Lividly, Sherlock’s gaze headed in every direction, before he collapsed into a chair and looked at John, just John. Always John Watson, and he didn’t need to say a word because John knew and understood, and didn’t say a word or attempt to make an impossible situation; instead, he simply sat by Sherlock, laced their fingers together, and let Sherlock sit in absolute silence for the rest of the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the incredible reception already, and I hope you enjoy! Jen.

Q woke up with a slight gasp, and the crushingly immediate memory of Albus Dumbledore being dead.

Ultimately, Q had deigned to sleep in the Hospital Wing; solitude truly did not suit him, and there was too much in his mind to allow him easy rest. Poppy was kind enough to supply him with a minute dose of Sleeping Potion, and Q was out like a light.

When he woke, Bond was sleeping next to him. Not curled around him, not quite, but within grasping distance; an assurance of there-ness. That if Q wanted, Bond was there and would _always_ be there.

Irene Adler was asleep two beds down. 

Sherlock had eventually exhausted himself into sleep in a bed opposite, which was something of a mercy. John seemed adamant that he was never letting the man go; there was something curiously fragile about Sherlock in that moment, bound up in the arms of somebody ostensibly far weaker than himself. A Muggle, who could – who would – protect Sherlock to the ends of the earth and back.

“Why did you Disarm me?” Q asked softly.

Bond was awake. He hadn’t moved, made no indication, but Q knew him; the breathing pattern was slightly off, and anyway, Bond didn’t sleep when the tension in the air could slice people apart. “I know what you think,” Bond replied quietly, and opened his eyes.

Q looked at him sharply, expression abruptly cold. “You don’t know a bloody thing. A _Death Eater_ , James, you Disarmed me in the middle of a duel with a Death Eater because it was _her_ , and I know, I _know_ it was a shock, but she’s not… it’s obvious that she’s not exactly an ally any more.”

“Q, I didn’t know how to respond,” Bond told him, very honestly. “I know it seems easy to you, but fuck, Q, I was _in love with her_. I nearly gave up everything for her, and I watched her die. The idea of… she wasn’t going to hurt you. It’s Vesper. Vesper is many things, but she wouldn’t.”

“It’s been years. How could you possibly know?”

Bond’s expression was contracted with more pain than Q had known possible. “I know _her_ ,” he said quietly, voice trailing off.

The pair looked at one another, Q near enough paralysed.

“Q, I love you. You are my life, and I would never do anything that would allow you to be hurt, but _Merlin above_ , please understand that I just found out somebody _I watched die_ , somebody who completely destroyed the person I was for a very long time and did me a lot of damage, _is not dead_. I buried her, I mourned for her.”

It was tempting, to be the grieved party. It was tempting to revel in his own insecurities and make Bond understand how much it hurt, but frankly, Q knew better: hurts are not all made equal. Pain can make render brilliant people idiots.

Frankly, Q was aware that his relationship was resting on a knife edge, and he also knew Bond. He knew Vesper. He had _feared_ Vesper, never being enough, and the simple fact of her living made Q want to scream with the sheer _unfairness_ of it.

Instead, he slid his fingers into Bond’s. “Talk to me,” he asked quietly, and swallowed back his own fears; they could be dealt with later.

For this moment, Bond mattered more.

“I don’t know what to do,” Bond admitted, after a silence that seemed to swallow everything.

Q nodded slightly, carefully holding onto him. “What do you _want_ to do? Is there anything you can do?”

Bond was silent again, almost numb. “I never believed she would turn to the Death Eaters,” he said honestly, softly. “We’re trying to kill her, Q. I want… I want to talk to her, I want to understand. This doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Q agreed softly, keeping his expression, his words, gentle. “James, she’s made her allegiances known. You can’t risk… there’s nothing to be done. The Vesper we saw is not the person you once knew.”

The quiet stretched, and Q didn’t try to invade it; Bond had to understand, had to work out himself what he was going to do in a near enough impossible situation. “I want to help her,” Bond admitted.

Q curled his body tighter around Bond’s, holding him, keeping him together however he could, Bond leaning into him until their limbs were inextricably knotted, until it was impossible to tell where each person began or ended.

They stayed like that for a very, very long time. Until Poppy had started her morning rounds, and people had started to re-invade the Hospital Wing; Neville was discharged in the morning, reports came through that Filius was doing relatively well and would make a full recovery.

Nobody had found any information about the Malfoy family, or indeed what You-Know-Who and his supporters were up to. Mycroft tiredly arrived at one stage, to give a general update; the school was protected, with no signs of any Dark supporters trying to break in.

Q had an update on Irene Adler, and quite what she was doing in the Hospital Wing with no signs of imminently waking; very simply, she had been working with so many groups, on so many fronts, that eventually the axe had needed to fall.

Irene had begun to work with Moriarty. The least predictable, or indeed stable, of the Death Eaters; given that he was potentially an independent party, it made sense to see whether Irene could gain any ground.

Nobody had anticipated Moriarty’s intelligence. Irene had been drawn into the Death Eater circles with dizzying speed, collecting information, managing a very useful handful of months among their ranks before Moriarty worked it out.

Irene had worked in the Muggle world as a dominatrix, and her skills were certainly transferrable to Dark circles. Blackmail, complex situations, compromising situations; she had done all in her power, and near succeeded in a number of places, in acquiring information that had saved lives. The Death Eaters had believed her theirs, and other Dark wizards quickly began to fall under her control. As far as the Order were concerned, Irene was one of the most valuable things to have ever happened to them.

She was extremely lucky to be alive. It was perhaps the only time anybody in the Wizarding or Muggle world alike could claim to be grateful that Jim Moriarty did not bother to dirty his hands with those he deemed inferior; he had not deigned to destroy her himself. 

Instead, he simply leaked information of her loyalties to a less organised and more random group of Dark wizards – another Irene had been conducting quiet dealings with – who lacked the devotion or indeed impetus to join the Death Eaters.

They had tracked her down, and decided they would take their time in killing her.

St Mungo’s would not have been safe. Irene had been immediately taken into the lockdown of Hogwarts, and everybody knew she would be remaining there. Molly had arrived with her; Poppy was only one woman, and while an admirable nurse for a school of young witches and wizards, remained a little underqualified to handle victims of torture or attempted murder.

Q had no idea how to respond to the news that Irene had been quite so important in the Order; Q had never really had her role explained. Frankly, Q still had no idea how to respond to Irene in general, so knowing he should probably be nice the woman was not exactly welcome news.

She was likely to remain unconscious for a little while yet, though, which gave Q the grace period needed to get his head around the issue. In the interim, there were other issues to deal with; the assembly consisted of the official announcements, and shortly after that, students started to be filtered out of the building by their parents.

During the assembly, Sherlock and John had left for the Burrow. Q was unspeakably relieved that they were no longer in the building. There were Ministry representatives beginning to buzz around, and the presence of either Sherlock – or indeed an actual Muggle – would have been potentially horrific.

Hogwarts became a very surreal environment. The students were uncertain and uncomfortable, exams were cancelled, the OWL and NEWT students panicked over their qualifications, Q was faced with several dozen years of students asking questions he had no answers to just yet, Ministry officials started to swarm, the Hospital Wing was placed on lockdown to ensure nobody discovered Irene or Draco.

At about lunchtime, Draco had woken up, and essentially started screaming. He had barely stopped for the next two hours. You-Know-Who had been threatening to torture, or kill, his family; he now had no idea whether they were alive, whether they were safe, and it was almost certain that they weren’t.

Draco was hysterical and mourning and desperate, and nobody could help him. There was no way of finding out whether his family were still alive – although the Order were certainly doing all they could – and thus, an already somewhat unstable Draco completely lost control of himself.

Q wound up being asked to try and deal with him, because he was the one who had saved the boy so everybody assumed he knew what in Merlin’s name to do, which of course he didn’t, and he was yelling at everything and nobody wanted to curse him, it seemed wrong.

“ _Draco_.”

He fell still, watching Q with naked, undiluted hatred. “This is your fault,” he hissed. “I didn’t want to come back here. I’m _better_ than that, than you people. I belong with them.”

The arrogance was perfectly pitched, and visibly hollow. Q watched, waited. The boy eventually slowed, stopped. 

“I’m sorry, Draco,” Q told him, with incredible simplicity. “You know why. I think you’d even forgive me, if you considered it a little closer. We can’t let you go back to them. Draco, we care about you, all of us…”

“… piss off…”

“… we care,” Q repeated, with a touch more force, “and we will protect you.”

“ _I don’t need protection_.”

“Then tell me where your family are, and why you’re afraid,” Q snapped back.

The silence was immediate and extraordinary, tension sitting heavily between them, rancid and poisonous. Draco was mutinously silent, and Q was prepared to wait; he remained utterly still, gaze merciless as Draco started to shift very slightly, started to try and grapple for words, any words to fill the silence.

“He’ll…” Draco began, and stalled, expression crumpling inwards very slightly.

Q softened slightly, moved closer, reaching out a hand. “We are doing everything we can to find them,” he promised. “I can’t make any promises, but we’re looking. If nothing else, we’ll make sure word reaches them that you’re safe.”

Draco’s expression twitched, for the shortest of stolen moments, into a painfully bitter smile. “And if they’re dead?”

Q had no answer, and Draco refused to speak further.

The silence was mutinous, oppressive. Q left after a little while, allowing Poppy and Molly to return to their jobs as best they could, while Draco stared blankly and trembled and cried in absolute silence and pretended he wasn’t.

It was very lucky that Ravenclaw were such a pragmatic House. 

That thought occurred, and would continue to occur, over the coming week: Q was placed in impromptu charge of a House, and they simply adapted. None attempted stoicism, none tried to be clever, nobody undermined him. Panic began to whip around the school quite quickly – inevitably, really, given the circumstances – and at that point, the Ravenclaw Prefects found Q almost immediately.

Q found himself sitting in his own Common Room with a cup of tea, explaining to terrified students that they would be safe. Since returning to Hogwarts, Q had barely been into the Ravenclaw dormitories; he felt sixteen again, sitting on an armchair with a fire crackling, his _home_ for so many years.

The Ravenclaw students listened, and acknowledged. Hogwarts had been breached, but it was now locked under more safety measures than most of the rest of the Wizarding world could hope to manage. You-Know-Who had been involved, in some capacity. There were a lot of reasons to be scared, but no reason to panic. It was being dealt with, and the important things remained to be safe: to return to the dormitories, to report anything problematic, to seek help.

Other Houses were far less adept at pragmatism, or indeed involving panic.

The Gryffindors attempted stoicism, which led to several students crying in classes as lessons began to tentatively start again, breakdowns and panic, rumours flying like errant Bludgers, and Minerva was stretched to her limits trying to keep control. The Hufflepuffs wound up trying to look after everybody, neglecting themselves in an attempt to keep their friends – both in and out of Hogwarts – sane and stable. The Slytherins just went ever further underground.

It didn’t help that Slytherins were connected to Dark forces, and it was common knowledge that Dumbledore’s death was murder. The entire school became poisoned, very quietly and very insidiously, against the Slytherins.

Q did a statutory talk that encompassed the necessary understanding that an entire House could not be held responsible for the actions of one of its number. Slytherins were not evil, nor were they automatically in league with Dark forces.

A second-year Slytherin had a breakdown in the middle of the Great Hall, at one stage. Her name was Elise, and not a single person from any other House would deign to speak to her any longer, despite previously having had friends from across her year.

As a Slytherin, she was not under Q’s jurisdiction; instead, Slughorn took her away for a chat, and when Q saw her next, she had been all but cocooned by her fellow Slytherins. They travelled in close-knit packs now, defensive and aloof in the only way they knew how, and alienated themselves from every other House as best they humanly could.

There was nothing anybody could truly do to stop them, and so Q watched a quarter of the witches and wizards of the next generation mire themselves in passive aggression and anger, already knowing it would end badly.

Draco Malfoy stopped speaking entirely. Harry refused to see him, or have anything to do with him – not overly surprising, given that the boy was grieving a man Draco had come perilously close to killing – but it culminated in a mutinous Draco staring blankly at the opposite wall and remaining catatonic whenever anybody came close.

Time slid. Dumbledore’s funeral came and went with sycophants and mourners, and the term ended on a note of desperate melancholy and uncertain segregation. The next Head of Hogwarts had not been announced – money was on Minerva – and exams were to happen at the beginning of the next term. Teachers and students alike were left in limbo.

The information came from Harry, in the end; he was still linked to You-Know-Who, and was exceptionally pale as he related what he had witnessed. The Malfoy parents were alive. You-Know-Who was angry about it all, unsurprisingly, and Draco would probably not be allowed to live if the Death Eaters retrieved him.

Q let out a long breath between his teeth, and tried to work out how to explain that to Draco. He was due to leave for the Burrow in the morning after several abortive escape attempts; hopefully the news would dissuade him from any moronic decisions.

Harry still refused to speak to the boy. He would disappear home to his Muggle family at the end of term, while most of the other students Q knew would move into the Burrow and edgily start to set up a new life there.

Bond and Q lay in bed, not touching, inches away.

“I don’t know where we go from here,” Q said softly, in the dying air, the cold sliding in through gaps in windows and unfindable places.

It was a question that could apply to so very many different facets of recent events, of recent days, of dated things and those little things that had remained studiously unsaid. “We’ll find a way,” Bond said quietly.

Q turned on his side, towards Bond, arm half reaching out, seeking Bond’s warmth on instinct.


	3. Chapter 3

Irene Adler woke up abruptly, with tangible terror in her eyes and expression, and she had never seemed vulnerable until that moment; she still had it living in her body and voice when Q made it up the Hospital Wing later that day.

It would have been easy to ignore her. Their history was not precisely positive, and Q couldn’t quite himself to trust her entirely, but he needed to know her story; they were on the same side, and in a world without Albus Dumbledore, it had never been so important to hold onto friends and allies, to forgive, and Q steeled himself and repeated that mantra quietly under his breath.

Bond was already there, which caused something of a twinge. It was an unnecessary one, but some hurts leave a scar, and this would be one for a while yet. “Irene,” Q said by way of a greeting, nodding slightly.

Molly Hooper was busy fretting around her, tangibly worried. It had been decided the previous day that she would be remaining indefinitely in Hogwarts as Irene’s Healer; in practise, she would probably be absorbed into the full Order before very long, given that she was an incredibly useful asset.

Irene looked between Q and Bond, and her pain lived too close to the skin to be hidden any longer. “I didn’t expect you to come here,” she said softly, voice a little hoarse.

“Me neither,” Q told her honestly, looking briefly to Bond; he was very still, very quiet, and Q remembered that he and Irene had been friends. They had shared missions out in the world together, knew one another better than Q really wanted to consider.

He hated her.

He couldn’t _afford_ to hate her.

Q sat by his husband, perhaps a little territorially; she noticed, smiled very slightly in a way Q would have once construed as utterly malevolent and schooled himself not to. “So,” he said quietly, “how are you?”

Irene shook her head slightly, in what was probably close to sheer disbelief at the _bizarreness_ of the situation, and Q was wondering all the same things she was and kept on reminding himself of his assurances, of the _knowledge_ that they needed each other. They all did.

Dumbledore lingered on the edges of his memory, and he breathed deeply and remained by Irene’s bedside; the rest of the Order would hear about this too, and the schism that had formed the previous Christmas stood a chance of healing.

 _The greater good_ , Q thought to himself, and stayed until Irene had fallen back into a melancholy unconsciousness, Bond’s gaze heavy on him. There were no words left, so he didn’t bother with trying.

“Thank you,” Bond said softly, as they walked out of the Hospital Wing, Q’s smile tinged with sadness he couldn’t quite put a name to.

He left to go to the Great Hall for dinner, rather looking forward to spending a little time with the other staff members; he, Aurora and Charity had a decent chat about the world and everything in it, alleviating from the immediacy of Dumbledore’s death and the impending end of term.

Everybody was just tired, now. A weariness that didn’t seem to leave, had penetrated into the bones of the school and mimicked in a sky that never saw true sun any more, the tangible loss and the still-acute pain.

-

Term ended with tangible relief on all fronts.

Everybody moved into the Burrow. Irene and Draco were transported over with great care and secrecy, Molly Hooper went with them, Sherlock and John had already set up shop, and Bond had prepared his and Q’s room; it was home, now that Grimmauld Place had gone.

The Burrow had been locked down beautifully. It was a little too small to fit them all, but everybody had come to terms with the inevitable necessity of sharing a very small space with one another.

Mycroft was running the Order. Q found it very weird.

Kingsley had moved back to look after the Muggle Prime Minister, Remus was deeply involved in a collection of werewolf circles, Molly Weasley was keeping house in much the same way as she had in Grimmauld Place; there was some confusion with having two Mollys about, which led to Molly Hooper being nicknamed ‘Mol’ and everybody being far less confused.

Harry broke up with Ginny. Q tried and failed to believe that it had nothing to do with Draco.

Q had yet to manage much conversation with Irene – they didn’t have a tremendous amount to say – but she was improving, gradually, and attempting to keep her mind together in the aftermath of torture.

Draco hadn’t spoken in over a week. He had heard the news about his parents having been tortured – everybody had tried to hide it, but Tonks had been talking about it with John, Draco happened to overhear – and had been rendered entirely mute. He had already known that You-Know-Who was after his blood; everybody had lied, and said there was no news of his parents.

Of course, he had consequently decided he didn’t trust a single member of the Order. He couldn’t leave, but couldn’t conscience speaking to anybody: thus he stayed absolutely silent. Barely ate, refused to communicate in the slightest.

Everybody in the Order who cared for him in the slightest was starting to panic, but for the time being at least, there was nothing to be done.

Sherlock was composing himself, in fragments. It seemed to help that he was busying himself learning every facet of magic he could – with an expression of pure self-loathing, true, but at least he was doing it.

John and Molly Hooper became the two medics of the Order, and invaluably so. John couldn’t leave the Burrow – he seemed to have somewhat resigned himself to never leaving specific buildings, Q couldn’t understand how the man had any sanity left whatsoever – but Molly could. Closer Order members could therefore be helped in the Burrow, while Molly travelled elsewhere.

Q arrived, to find Sherlock trying to make tea. “Dare I ask?” he said lightly, as Sherlock moved his wand in deft increments, hands utterly eloquent with their extension; the words broke Sherlock’s concentration, and Q responded with uncharacteristic speed to prevent the kettle exploding. “Sorry.”

Sherlock shot him an irate look. “I can handle myself,” he said primly, and pulled the kettle back from Q’s charm; it bubbled, Sherlock kept it on the stove, moving cups and teabags around, jaw set with utter concentration, smiling slightly to himself as all worked perfectly, no water spilt.

Q technically had _qualifications_ in Charms, and couldn’t manage to not spill everything possible when Levitating. “Nicely done,” Q nodded, as Sherlock straightened slightly, looking rather pleased with himself.

“Thank you,” he replied simply, and found milk with far more confident wand movements. “Could you call John?”

The Burrow was wonderful for calling people; Q could stand at the bottom of a seemingly endless staircase, yell once, and at least four heads would pop out of various places. Honestly, Q much preferred it to Grimmauld Place. Here felt like a home, and Q could imagine staying there for a while yet.

John arrived a moment later, and Q abruptly realised that Sherlock had decided to make tea for his boyfriend.

It was not the weirdest thing Sherlock had ever done, but it was definitely up there. Sherlock didn’t do things for other people, as a general rule; he clearly really, _really_ cared about John Watson.

Q shook his head slightly, unable to quite suppress his grin, and settled with his laptop; he was presently using a rather complex mix of Arithmancy, Muggle computer coding and maths to try and make the pseudo Fidelius Charm work on an internet forum. It meant unravelling – in Arithmancy – quite how the charm was originally constructed, before transposing into any manner that was recognisably Muggle.

It meant coding, testing, scheming, thinking, attempting everything with just the slightest deviance in the hope that it would work again, a million and one trials, and all while Q was still occupied working on other projects like surveillance systems, and indeed small bugs that could be hidden on somebody’s person.

Time always seemed movable, when Q was working. More than once, he would find himself in absurd times of the day or night, completely lost in whatever he had been doing, and he _loved_ when he did. He loved Bond, for placing a mug of tea next to him despite knowing that Q wouldn’t even notice, but just start drinking it absentmindedly, and register with surprise several hours later that he’d ever had it.

Q emerged from his work sphere to just play, for a bit. He had always loved the Internet, as a concept, as something to just enjoy and explore; there was _so much of it_ , and Q understood how Muggles could spend hours at once delving through miles of it.

“ _What is that_?” a voice asked, with sheer reverence, as Q smiled slightly at a site he had intermittently procrastinated on for years.

Arthur stood behind, eyes wide; slightly dark-ringed, but then, working in the Ministry was a very difficult thing, and Q couldn’t blame him for being tired. “That’s a video. Or film. It’s the Muggle version of pictures… we have still ones, but we also have those.”

Arthur looked absolutely captivated, and Q couldn’t help but smile slightly. “That’s a GIF, actually,” Sherlock corrected from behind them.

“That’s a ‘j’ sound, that’s wrong – it should be GIF, with the hard ‘g’ sound,” John corrected from the other side of the kitchen, hand-washing his potions cauldron (a gift for his last birthday) despite everybody insisting that they could just _scourgify_ it when he was done.

Arthur glanced up, visibly excited. “What’s a GIF?” he said, stuttering over the pronunciation, as John and Sherlock exchanged looks.

Q rolled his eyes slightly. “Both of you – I didn’t actually want to try and get into the explanation of what a GIF is…”

“Jif,” Sherlock corrected obnoxiously, eyes sparkling with wicked enjoyment.

John smiled very slightly at Sherlock’s tone, and Q’s expression. “GIF is spelt with a g, it’s a g,” he said, agreeing with Q, Q looking extremely triumphant.

“ _It sounds like JIF the creator said so_ ,” Sherlock snapped lividly. “Arthur, it’s a ‘j’. Trust me. I know more than these two idiots. Use Google.”

Arthur’s face kept on lighting up, until Q wasn’t sure he was capable of looking any happier. “ _Google_. I know what that is! The search thing, the… the big thing…”

“Yep,” Q agreed, Arthur’s joy rather contagious; behind him, Sherlock and John were continuing to bicker, and the entrance of Remus and Tonks – Whisp trailing behind, the treacherous thing still resolutely mimicking Tonk’s hair, today a burnished gold – only served to lift the mood further.

Remus looked _happy_ , for the first time in a long while. “James, can I borrow you?” he asked, glancing at Tonks briefly, and smiling a little more as Bond stood to follow him out. “Back in a moment, ladies and gents.”

Tonks was slightly giggly, slightly delirious, and Q just grinned and raised an eyebrow and she said nothing but couldn’t quite sit still. Sherlock watched, close to John in a quietly understated way, John sipping his tea and taking over Q’s laptop to browse Facebook and assure his rather estranged sibling that he wasn’t dead.

-

Life in the Burrow was very calm, actually. Most of the Order were primarily concerned with getting Harry out of his Muggle home; Mycroft was stage-managing, along with Mad Eye Moody, whom Q had only met once or twice. The man very rarely showed up at the Order given his paranoia about the relative safety of different strongholds; as far as Q was aware, he had also been occupied on some form of endeavour in the States for much of the preceding year.

Q listened with quiet interest to the plans with Harry; he was likely to be involved at some stage, but he wasn’t entirely certain _which_ stage just yet.

The rest of the Order were involved elsewhere. Remus was very heavily involved in werewolf circles, Mycroft was doing god-alone knew what, Arthur and Kingsley still worked for the Ministry. Charity Burbage went missing a few weeks into the holidays, which meant a fair few Order members had been dispatched to try and track her down.

Draco wasn’t allowed to listen in on anything of the Order’s plans. Fleur had started trying to talk to him, once in a while; he didn’t respond, but Fleur was more than content to talk, happily going through aspects of her wedding plans while Draco remained ostensibly tuned out of proceedings.

Tonks and Remus’s marriage happened very unexpectedly, and very abruptly; it transpired that Remus had asked Bond to be his witness, Tonks had taken John, and they returned to the Burrow with wedding rings and – in Tonks’s case, at least – deliriously happy expressions. To Q’s great amusement, Mycroft had conducted the ceremony; it transpired that, like Dumbledore, being heavily affiliated with the Ministry in such a profound capacity, once upon a time, left him still magically able to bind people in matrimony.

Q found the entire concept hilarious, and everybody celebrated the wedding itself with minimal fuss but a lot of cake.

They also managed to time it to be a week before Bond and Q’s anniversary; the pair celebrated quietly, Bond cooking and both dressing up nicely, candles hovering around them and every single person in the Burrow steering clear.

“I love you, you know,” Bond told Q gently; Q smiled softly, accepting Bond’s proffered hand and scooting his chair around, winding up leant against Bond, his arms looping around him, pulling him in and keeping him there, holding him until the tension had drained away, until Q could remember being barely twenty and falling hideously in love entirely by accident by a man who smelt of cinnamon and molten caramel.

In the darkness of their room, Bond and Q lying together but apart, and they talked. “I can’t lose you,” Bond murmured to the darkness, and Q remained silent and waited for more. “You’re everything. From the moment I met you.”

Q twisted his body inwards, forgiving him, letting Bond’s warmth seep into him and it was James, it was _his_ James, and he had promised forever for a reason. They were worth fighting for, the good outweighed the bad.

Bond fell asleep long before Q did; Q felt the rise and fall, felt Bond’s heartbeat beneath his hand and closed his eyes, making his peace while he still could, making his decision. “Love you too,” he murmured into the silent room, and fell asleep with a small smile curling the corners of his mouth.

-

“The plan is simple,” Moody growled at them all; Mycroft stood to one side, watching, and the other Order members remained congregated in the Burrow kitchen, far too many people squeezed into a confined space. “We have Polyjuice potion, thanks to our Muggle friend here…”

John blushed slightly; the potion had been his hardest endeavour thus far, and he was damn proud of the results. There was enough in his batch to last a decently long while, more than enough for the new scheme Moody had concocted.

“We all go together. Half of us take Polyjuice to become Harry, it should confuse the Death Eaters enough to give us time. Different modes of escape will be necessary. All of you will pair off – twins, Ron, Hermione, Q, Fleur, you’ll all be taking the potion.”

Q nodded slightly, shooting a quick glance to Bond; he looked worryingly severe, but remained close to Q. “Pairings?”

“Bill and Fleur, and Q and Bond together, obviously. Tonks, you take Fred, Remus take George,” he continued, nodding at each of the twins in turn.

“So I’m with Tonks,” George said merrily, glancing at Fred; he looked aghast for a moment, before turning to Remus. “I’m with Tonks, aren’t I? Am I? Moody?”

Moody turned his eye on them, and growled slightly. “I’m going to wring the pairs of your necks if you don’t shut up,” he muttered blackly, and continued his list. “Hagrid’ll be taking Potter, and I’ll be taking you, Miss Granger.”

Hermione gave a nervous smile and a nod; Moody returned a gruff one himself. “Arthur and Kingsley are staying with the Ministry and Prime Minister of the Muggles respectively – we want to keep leaking our false stories, you Weasley lot aren’t well liked already. There should be enough of us.”

“Shouldn’t Harry be going with the best… y’know… fighter?” Ron broached, somewhat nervously; he was clearly grateful, if a little frightened, to be going with Mycroft. “I mean, Hagrid is brilliant, right, but…”

“They’d expect Harry to be with the best fighters,” Moody returned shortly. “It gives him time. Any questions?”

He looked far too intimidating to actually answer; everybody remained quiet, and Moody nodded sharply. “Good.”

Everybody took that as their dismissal, and promptly vanished, Moody’s eye tracing after them all the way.

“I’m going to look like Harry Potter for a night,” Q muttered darkly, as he trudged up the stairs with Bond. “A little humiliating, I have to say. Would have liked to have been an actual fighter… oh well. I’m not surprised, but still.”

Bond grinned. “I get to be your knight in shining armour,” he teased; Q raised an eyebrow, trying and succeeding to not smile. “You have to admit, I’m utterly dashing.”

Q shook his head slightly. “Not as much as you think, old man – grey hair?” he smirked, nodding at Bond’s scalp; the man actually paled slightly, to Q’s hilarity, and cursed Merlin quickly as he realised Q was joking. “Paranoid, are we?”

“I hate you sometimes,” Bond teased, holding the door open for Q before letting it swing shut, locking it with a quick wand flick.

Q smiled wickedly. “No, you don’t,” he returned instantly.

Bond pounced forward; Q expected a kiss, only to find Bond _mercilessly_ tickling him. “No, _no_ , this is _torture_ , you’re not allowed, _no_ , James…”

The pair dissolved into laughter, Q trying to bat Bond away and he was having none of it, and Q just laughed with a freedom he hadn’t known he had, with the thoughts of everything outside the Burrow fading for just a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hang onto your hats... Jen.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was indescribably fun. Dialogue is taken verbatim in places from HP7. My eternal adoration to those reading/commenting/following - you guys are the best. Enjoy! Jen.

July twenty-sixth. A Saturday. The Order were ready to take Harry Potter home to the Burrow, hopefully taking the Death Eaters entirely by surprise. Everybody remained exceptionally on their guard anyway. The risks were too great; Pius Thicknesse had gone over, which meant Plan B was go. They simply could not afford to lose Harry, and so every single protection had been put in place.

Bond cast Q’s Disillusionment Charm for him, rapping Ron and Hermione on the head too while Moody dealt with the twins. Mycroft seemed weirdly flippant about matters, scanning over the assembled heads; watching him defer to Moody was a bizarre experience, given that Mycroft had never willingly deferred to another human being in Q’s memory unless being sycophantic.

The two Mollys, Sherlock and John were remaining behind, prepared for any unexpected problems. Sherlock looked gutted to be missing out, but his wandwork was still not quite of the standard of duelling required just yet.

Mycroft and Ron wound up on a Thestral, as did Bill and Fleur. Hagrid was taking his motorbike. Moody and Hermione, Remus and George, Tonks and Fred and indeed Q and Bond were all on brooms; Moody thought it most likely that the Death Eaters would assume the real Potter would be on a broom, which Q wholeheartedly agreed with.

It also made him slightly more nervous to be on a broom, but it would be alright. “Don’t be scared; I’ll protect you,” Bond muttered teasingly, and got a jab in the ribs from Q in return.

They rode into the dark sky. It wasn’t too far to go, but far enough that it was easy to get a little anxious; Q held onto Bond, not especially confident on a broom but enough so that he wasn’t going to fall off in the imminent future.

It was impossible to speak; nobody wanted to attract unwanted attention while the skies were not exactly safe. Q felt the start of the descent, and wrinkled his face at the feeling of his stomach dropping out of him as they lowered altitude; Hagrid’s motorbike roared, and they plummeted en masse into a suburban Surrey back garden.

Q shivered slightly. He had always hated suburbia, and this – identical houses, identical hedges, mown lawn, everything sterile and clean – was his idea of definite hell. Give him the Burrow any day, where chaos grew out of the walls and floors and everywhere in between.

Harry appeared very quickly, not too surprisingly; Ron and Hermione immediately assaulted him with hugs, and Hagrid happily called “All righ', Harry? Ready fer the off?"

"Definitely," said Harry, beaming around at them all; Q gave him a quick nod of greeting, easily returned. "But I wasn't expecting this many of you!"

"Change of plan," growled Moody; his eye was everywhere, the bags of clothing on his back making for a particularly menacing figure in the darkening garden. "Let's get undercover before we talk you through it."

Harry led them through to a plaster-cast suburban kitchen, all shiny and plastic in places, a stainless steel fridge-freezer which Tonks propped herself again, sliding slightly and catching herself, snorting slightly as Remus caught her. “Hey Harry, guess what?” she called, showing off her ring.

For a moment, Harry’s face fell, before splitting into a grin. “You got married?!”

"I'm sorry you couldn't be there, Harry, it was very quiet,” Remus called back, while Ron and Hermione continued to beam, and Moody abruptly yelled over the hubbub to provoke a deathly silence.

Q suppressed a smile slightly as he watched Harry’s reactions throughout Moody’s explanations; there was something endearing about his absolute refusal to allow anybody to risk their lives for him. Somehow, he seemed to not be grasping that everybody present knew the risks, and had made their decisions a long time ago.

Bond and Q would be going to Skyfall, impressively enough; they had the furthest to go, barring Moody, who was heading towards one of his safe houses in Wales, and Mycroft. Mycroft was going to the Holmes manor; it technically belonged to Mycroft now, but none of the Holmes boys ever went there.

Harry had the shortest trip, of course, and both Remus and Tonks would be roughly in the same county; they could act as extra defences if required, but with luck, it would be something of a simple venture.

The Polyjuice potion was a bright gold; Bond shot Q a truly wicked look, and Q flicked him the finger before downing it in a handful of quick gulps.

It was a bloody weird sensation. Q could have sworn his face was melting, everything felt bizarre, and to his surprise, he found his eyesight improving a fair amount; he pulled off his glasses with mild confusion, popping them in a pocket. He was a few inches taller than Harry, quickly swapped his trousers for ones that weren’t massively overlong, but could otherwise get away without needing to change much.

Seeing seven Harry Potters around the room was definitely new. Q didn’t know whether or not to laugh. “This is officially the weirdest thing I’ve ever done,” Q noted aloud; Remus looked at him, at the glasses on his nose and the voice, and snorted with laughter. “I wouldn’t laugh, oh furry one.”

Bill and Bond exchanged looks, somewhat helplessly glancing at their partners, who were now both Harry Potter. “I’m marrying Harry Potter,” Bill muttered under his breath, and Bond just remained slightly speechless, looking at Q’s wedding ring on Harry’s finger.

“ _Everybody quiet_.”

Q heard a brief, and somewhat familiar, click. “You absolute _bastard_ ,” he hissed at his eldest brother, who was holding a camera.

Mycroft looked practically _mischievous_. “I swore to Sherlock I’d take pictures,” he returned unapologetically, tucking the camera into his interior jacket pocket primly, and straightening fully, expression re-solidifying into his usual mask.

“I hate you,” Q grumbled, as Bond made every effort in the world to keep a straight face and near enough failed; they filed outside, Bond muttering _up_ at his broom and smiling slightly to himself as it obeyed. Q forgot, occasionally, just how much Bond loved to fly.

Q perched on the back, looking around the infinite Harry Potters around him. “See you in one hour, at the Burrow,” Moody told them, and they lifted off into the ground.

Instantly, there were jets of light, absolutely everywhere. Q’s expression fell, wand in hand, throwing spells instantly, Shield charms, yelling at Bond to _go, just go, I’ve got it here just fucking move_ and there was laughter and so much motion, they had been _waiting_ , and there were a good five or six in pursuit.

Mycroft was briefly visible, throwing spells, before peeling off; everything seemed impossibly quick, time was elastic, and Bond yelled as a spell moved inches in front of his face and a voice crowed.

Not again, _no_ , but then, of all people to track, Silva would be trying to track and kill Bond. It was hardly a surprise, but that _voice_ , and Q couldn’t work out if he was imagining it or not because that voice was there in his nightmares still, once in a while.

Bond abruptly dropped them, about thirty feet, and Q _screamed_.

The handle of the broom slipped from his grip, and he was falling, the ground a very long way away but approaching with truly impressive speed.

“ _Arresto momentum!_ ” yelled a voice – Spanish accent, a streak of blond in the corner of his eye, and Q didn’t have enough time to fully consider the repercussions of that – before another spell slammed into his side. A Summoning Charm wouldn’t be sufficient to capture a falling human being, Q _knew_ that, and it was weirdly the only thought left to his head as he continued to fall, the world still moving very quickly indeed.

Honestly, Q wasn’t certain as to whether or not he was screaming. Probably. It would make sense.

Bond was practically on top of him. They were still falling.

“ _Q_.”

In retrospect, Q had no idea how he did it, but he found himself hanging onto the tail of Bond’s broom. He cast practically without conscious thought to right himself again, fist knotting briefly in Bond’s robes as they reached truly blinding speeds, wind lacerating Q’s face.

Everything continued at breakneck speed, simply because there was no alternative. Jets of light were painting the sky, and Q’s heart was thumping with erratic and painful immediacy in his chest.

 _Merlin_ but Bond was a good flyer. He was casting himself, the pair working with an instinctive understanding; Q worked on defence, Bond on attack, and Q watched a Death Eater topple out of the sky from Bond’s stunner, another killed with a rebounded Killing Curse.

Q didn’t have time to think, to consider repercussions of why people were there, how the Death Eaters had known. Delirious adrenaline, more extreme than anything he had known, worse than the fights in June, the year before. This was a whirl of iced air and breath clouding as light streamed, reverberating inches from them, Bond’s heat and warmth and yells, the _noise_ , fireworks racing across the skies.

“ _Avada Kedavra_ ,” Q yelled, without even considering it fully. Kill or be killed. The Order could hardly claim moral superiority.

The Death Eaters all seemed to vanish at once.

Breathless, Q couldn’t think, body shaking with suppressed energy. Bond continued flying at speed, and Q’s eyes darted everywhere, trying to find anything further, inadvertently Stunning a sparrow at one stage when he saw motion.

The descent was quick, crashing into the front drive of Skyfall. “Quick, or we’ll miss it,” Bond told Q roughly, and grasped his hand with crushing force. “ _Accio Portkey_.”

It glowed blue, and Q found his middle being pulled out from under him at the same time as his face started to mutate, his hair growing, eyesight getting worse again, clothes undersized and he found himself in the Burrow, Bond’s hand grinding bones together, before Bond twisted to him and checked him over, pulling him into a deep and tension-ridden embrace. “I’m alright,” Q rasped, barely believing it himself. “M’alright.”

Remus burst out of the house to point his wand at Bond and Q. “Bangladesh,” Bond called, before Remus had a chance to ask the question; he immediately lowered his wand.

Q knew it had something to do with Bond’s time in the Department of Mysteries, but had never asked too closely. Remus knew, simply because he and Bond had shared experiences in the less auspicious sides of the Ministry. It was how they had met. “Q’s him, I’m certain,” Bond said quickly. “Who’s back?”

“Harry, Hagrid, then George and I. No sign of anyone else,” Remus said quickly; Q let out a small sound of shock, Bond very pale. “George lost an ear. No sign of the rest, they should have been back by now…”

Sherlock appeared from inside the house; he took a look at Q, at the state of him, and seemed to repress the urge to move closer. “You’re alive. Superb,” he said instead, face utterly bloodless. “You were beginning to concern me. Have you seen Mycroft?”

Q shook his head, and Sherlock tried – and failed a little – to conceal his worry.

Abruptly, there was a _pop_ from outside the Burrow’s boundaries. “ _Shit_ ,” Q said immediately, running towards the edge where Hermione Granger stood, and literally fell into the edges of the Burrow. “The book I gave you the Christmas before last?!” Q yelled at her.

“ _Transfiguration and Cultural Differences_ ,” she managed, before bursting into tears.

Harry rushed past Q, pushing him out of the way. “Hermione, _Hermione_ , are you alright?”

“Professor Moody,” she managed, with hitching breaths, chest heaving as she tried and failed to compose herself. “We were… Harry, I don’t know what happened, but he was… I don’t think he could have survived. I had to Disapparate, couldn’t think of where, ended up at home and I couldn’t… I couldn’t think, took me ages to work out how to… I mean, where to go…”

She took a few hitching breaths, stopped, looked up at the adults who had all assembled. “I think he’s dead,” she repeated, with a laudable degree of calm.

The bottom truly pitched out of Q’s stomach.

Abruptly, Tonks and Fred broke through the boundaries; she was off the broom in an instant, moving for her husband. " _Remus!_ "

“Mad-Eye’s dead,” he said simply, face white and set in a painful-looking rictus.

Tonks seemed to crumple, like somebody had punched her in the stomach, folding into herself for a moment while the other children tried to compose themselves. "Fred, go in, George is there, he’s injured…”

Fred was gone in a heartbeat, long before the sentence could get finished.

“What kept you? What happened?" Remus demanded of Tonks, as she took in steady gulps of air and fixed her jaw, an almost-mimicry of Remus himself.

"Bellatrix," said Tonks. "She wants me quite as much as she wants Harry, Remus, She tried very hard to kill me. I just wish I'd got her, I owe Bellatrix. But we definitely injured Rodolphus.... Then we got to Ron's Auntie Muriel's and we missed our Portkey and she was fussing over us…”

“Silva was after us,” Bond interjected, voice a welcome warmth in the emptiness around them. “He wants me dead, too. One each, Tonks.”

Tonks didn’t manage a smile. She started to make her way indoors instead, Remus supporting her a little before leaving to watch the skies, to wait for the final two pairs.

Inside, John seemed to be doing most of the work; Molly Hooper was at his side, the pair on either side of the boy’s body. “It’s Dark Magic, John may be able to do something about saving the ear,” Mrs Weasley said quickly. “He’ll be alright, Fred, stop fretting.”

“Where’s Ron?” Hermione squeaked abruptly, eyes widening. “Are they not…”

“Mycroft, Ron, Bill and Fleur,” Q told her quickly, glancing to Bond again, quickly, back again.

There was a noise outside; everybody’s heads turned, Bond moving quickly to reach Remus just as the boundaries allowed Bill and Fleur in on their thestral; Bill immediately got off, a perfunctory hug from Mrs Weasley insufficient as he simply confirmed: “Mad-Eye’s dead.”

Hermione let out a small noise, a moan of sorts, from the doorway into the Burrow. She slid down slightly, caught by Fred who guided her in, shaking, chalk-white himself; Bill explained the circumstances, clearly in shock himself, and Q abruptly realised that Hermione had to have come face to face with You-Know-Who himself.

While everybody else was still comparing notes, he went to her. “Hermione,” he said softly. “Are you alright? How much did you see?”

“He fell back on me,” Hermione murmured, curled up against a wall looking very small, very fragile. “I just saw… V-Voldemort, he was _flying_ , and… there was a flash, everything was moving really fast… I fell off the broom with him, Disapparated in mid-air, I thought he could have done too... Reached home and hit the pavement, my arm, it dislocated when I… when I hit the ground, and I, I had to heal it…”

Q nodded, reached out. “Mind if I have a look?” he asked gently, fingers probing around the socket; she’d done a good job, actually, especially under the circumstances. “Go on?”

“I knew he had been unconscious, but I couldn’t go back, the fall would have… and then I didn’t know if the Burrow was safe, so I just waited, trying to think, I’m sorry, I really am…”

Hermione didn’t cry. She looked shockingly composed, actually, for one who had just watched a teacher and adult she greatly respected die literally on top of her. “You did extraordinarily well,” Q told her gently. “A lot of wizards would have died, in those circumstances. You know Mad-Eye, he would be proud of you.”

They were rudely interrupted by the emergence, _finally_ , of the last Holmes brother. Hermione scrambled to her feet, crying out “ _Ron!_ ” as he slid off and was immediately half bowled-over by her and Harry. “The song Sherlock sang when you couldn’t sleep,” Mycroft snapped at Q, wand raised.

“You are my sunshine,” Q replied softly; when he had been a lot younger – when Sherlock was in Muggle schools and Q would visit, Mycroft and Sherlock living together in a Muggle house – Sherlock would look after him. Q was maybe seven or eight, and his brother would be there to ward away bad dreams and nargles.

Sherlock rolled his eyes from the doorway. “Thank you for that, brother mine,” he said, with something of a low growl, as everybody present glanced between him and Q with barely-concealed and slightly hysterical amusement. “If everybody’s done threatening one another?”

With that, he stalked inside, with the evident intention of making everybody follow. Q assaulted Mycroft with a quick hug – he patted Q awkwardly on the side of his head before peeling him away – and disappeared indoors.

George had a passable _thing_ attached to the side of his head. “What’s going on?” Q asked, looking over him; John stood back, looking extremely tired but pleased with himself.

“It should be theoretically possible to magically grow an ear out of a given tissue sample,” Molly Hooper filled in, while Fred and George managed a reunion, and Mrs Weasley looked tearful and rather fragile. “If we can, then there are Muggle means to re-attach it, stitching and things. We can try, anyway.”

Mycroft, meanwhile, was informed of Moody’s death. “That is deeply unfortunate,” he said, with terrible quiet; he had been close to Mad-Eye, the pair had respected one another greatly. “We should attempt to retrieve the body as a matter of priority, I would assume the skies are safe now that Harry has been installed here…”

“Zis is not ze point! Ow did zey know we were moving 'Arry tonight? Somebody must 'ave been careless. Somebody let slip ze date to an outsider. It is ze only explanation for zem knowing ze date but not ze 'ole plan,” Fleur cried out from behind them, crying with tear tracks etching lines in her impeccably beautiful face.

Everybody was quiet for a moment, before Harry – of course it was Harry, who else would be so quick to jump on the defensive – spoke: "No… I mean... if somebody made a mistake," he went on, "and let something slip, I know they didn't mean to do it. It's not their fault. We've got to trust each other. I trust all of you, I don't think anyone in this room would ever sell me to Voldemort."

Q and Bond exchanged quick looks, Mycroft’s expression twitched up into a slight smile. “Well said, Harry,” Fred returned, before anybody had the chance to speak.

Harry glanced around; Q smiled at him, Mycroft inclined his head in quiet agreement, Hagrid noisily blowing his noise as he was overcome slightly. Only Remus remained slightly less enthusiastic, watching Harry with an unfathomable expression

Outside, Arthur Weasley arrived home. “ _Molly_ ,” he yelled, running into the house to see George laid out, Fred keeping vigil by his bedside. “What happened. _What happened_?!”

“He’s fine, he’ll be fine,” John told him quickly, hand up to still him, placatory. “We’re trying to save the ear, can’t be certain yet.”

The news spread about Moody, Arthur looking immediately horrified; Remus and Bill disappeared in an attempt to retrieve Moody’s body, Harry and the other kids disappeared outside.

Bond had begun to hold onto Q with a need that was palpable and incredibly open for him; Q held straight back, body orientating around him, unable to fathom the idea of losing James. The fact of losing Moody, of _all people_ , was enough to make Q finally consider that he could lose everything.

He could lose Bond, and the idea made bile rise in his throat, made him never want to leave Bond’s side. His siblings, too; Mycroft, Q had always considered a constant. Nothing could touch his brother, only he had thought the same of Moody – everybody had – and that meant Mycroft could go too.

The Burrow was filled with people who were risking everything, _everything_ , for the sake of the wider wizarding world.

Q was terrified.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for updates being fairly slow, I'm still mired in chaos via that most unhelpful of things, Real Life. Hopefully will grow more frequent as time slips by. Thank you, as ever, to those reading, commenting, subscribed etc; you guys make my life infinitely happier and generally joyous. Jen.

Moody’s death permeated the next few days. Bond was occupied on a number of Order-related ventures; Q saw him every evening without fail, Bond coming back to see Q with a look of frightening intensity in his gaze, as though a single misplaced look could lose him Q forever.

Sherlock refused to stop practising magic. Apparently, if he was going to be taken into the magical world, he was going to be extraordinary – and Q knew he was intending to be able to protect everybody, everybody he physically could.

John was worried about him. Sherlock had a nasty habit of being dangerously intense, when he fixed his mind on any given goal. Q worried too, but only a little; time needed to pass, Sherlock needed to become fully accustomed to his abilities and used to using them however he wanted. It would pass.

In the interim, Q checked Sherlock’s likely haunts for any stashed drugs – the echoes of that very January hung over them all, and would do for a while yet – and mercifully found nothing. John was being ridiculously vigilant about checks himself, and Mycroft had stopped even vaguely pretending to be apologetic about his newfound habit of breaking into Sherlock’s room and wantonly casting Summoning Charms just to be on the safe side.

Sherlock still tangibly craved escape. The difference, now, was that nobody was prepared to let him.

Q had been in the Burrow’s kitchen, eating a veritable mountain of porridge – " _you’re looking thin again dear, need to feed you up_ ” – when Irene Adler had finally re-entered the land of the living.

“Hello,” she said, a little uncertainly; Mrs Weasley and Fleur were busy constructing last-minute wedding plans, glancing up between Irene and Q with tangible uncertainty.

Q just gestured at a chair, smiled. “Tea?” he offered, his own mug still steaming gently. “I’m almost certain there’s still some porridge too.”

“A coffee would be lovely, if you have it,” she replied simply, settling into the chair, the starts of a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth; she looked to Fleur briefly, the pair exchanging the rather distrustful glances of two extraordinarily beautiful people – and both Veela-related – in a confined space.

Mrs Weasley smiled, and waved at the porridge that sat on the stove; it bubbled merrily, before pouring itself into a bowl, a very large amount of fruit, honey and raisins settling on top. “Worse than he is,” she told Irene, with a slightly disparaging nod towards Q. “Now, Fleur, about the bridesmaids…”

Q tuned out, instead turning his attentions to Irene. She remained staring at her bowl, picking out the raisins, eating in minute bites and very stilted in movement; it was a curious juxtaposition, her uncertainty and her still-destructive beauty. “You don’t have to pretend,” she pointed out, briefly thanking Q for the coffee that materialised in front of her. “You don’t trust me.”

“No,” Q agreed, as Whisp leapt onto his lap, and he stroked her bottle-green fur absentmindedly as he picked his words. “I don’t. I’m not going to pretend we’re going to be close friends, but we’re on the same side. I will say this though: if you come near my husband again, I will not be held responsible for my actions.”

Irene glanced up at him, and nodded with honest sincerity. “I network,” she explained, and Q finally began to understand, _finally_. “He was – he _is_ \- important to the Order, and I need protection. I honestly planned to be far more subtle with him. I know… I know that isn’t what you’d want to hear, but I…”

She stalled for a moment. Q had gone a little bit white. “I thought as much,” he said, very quietly, a little bit dangerously. “My only question: how far does that brand of amorality stretch?”

There was a sting in his voice, one that Irene very slightly winced at. “I nearly died for the cause,” she pointed out, smiling in a way Q recognised, the tired smile of somebody who had been hurt and hadn’t broken yet. “I take risks. Sometimes, they don’t pay off.”

Q nodded slowly. “I have to admit, you’re not great at making me trust you more,” he told her, with a note of lightness, a teasing quality; she smiled back, still playing with her porridge, Q draining the last of his tea. “Anyway. How are you feeling?”

Mrs Weasley and Fleur watched the pair exchanging quiet, almost-comfortable conversation; Fleur just raised a perfect eyebrow, shrugged slightly, and the pair returned to their somewhat frenetic wedding planning.

The wedding was to be on the first of August. The entire Burrow – everybody who wasn’t working on specific Order-related tasks, and were trapped for any prolonged period with Mrs Weasley – found themselves decorating, pruning, generally occupied.

Thus, Q ensured that he spent almost _all_ of his time on his various gadget endeavours. Soon, he found himself with a type of CCTV arrangement he could create; trying to get a wireless connection in or out of a given location would be difficult, but it was definitely worth trying.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were up to something. Everybody knew. None of them were telling. Mrs Weasley in particular was adamant that she would get it out of them, but thus far, to no avail. Instead, she developed a rather amusing habit of trying to keep them as far away from one another as physically possible, as though it was likely to have any effect.

Draco remained silent, but there was something, an indistinct something between him and Harry that Q couldn’t quite understand; exchanged glances, memory of a time and place forgotten, the shadows of an almost-relationship that had died over a year ago but sat heavily between them.

“You still care about him,” Q commented absentmindedly, as Harry took a few minutes off from yet another job Mrs Weasley had thrown at him. Harry looked up, clearly confused. “Draco.”

Harry’s expression closed off. “I’m straight,” he said firmly, solidly.

“Okay. You still care about him, though,” Q returned, near enough instantly; another sharp glance from Harry, before he returned attention to his hands, as though they were the most fascinating things in the world. “Harry, he has lost everything. Of all people, you can understand what that does to a person. I think we can safely assume that he feels rather alienated, given that Mycroft’s the only other Slytherin around, and isn’t the most approachable person in the world.”

A small, twitched smile. “I watched him threaten to kill Dumbledore,” he noted quietly.

“You also watched him fail to,” Q reminded, very gently. He let out a slight sigh. “I can’t force you to do anything, Harry. I’m just suggesting. You could help him, and Merlin knows he needs it.”

Harry nodded, albeit a little reluctantly. Before he could reply, Q stood, and disappeared to continue his work; he had nearly found a way to make device transmissions work through magical distortion, and figured it could be an extremely useful way of bugging the Death Eaters if they came close enough.

The days slid past as best they could.

Moody’s body had never been recovered; they feared the Death Eaters had got there first. Hermione had seemed to calm a little from the shock, but once in a while, memory struck and she seemed to contract slightly, only incrementally but enough; Harry remained close to her in those moments. He had been too close to too many deaths himself.

Q spoke to Minerva a little, trying to establish what would happen the next year: “I will be taking over as Headmistress. We will announce shortly,” she said, in her comfortable burr; there were no other staff even vaguely eligible, and Scrimgeour had no reason to object to Minerva. “Does James know you’re coming back?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Q returned easily, smiling slightly. “It’s Hogwarts. It’ll need all the support possible, now.”

Minerva nodded her agreement, and stood: “I have an inordinate amount of work to do,” she stated aloud. “A pleasure as always, Q. My love to James, when he returns.”

She vanished, and Q returned to his piles of books, his sketched-out ideas for the coming year; being away from the Order would put certain strains on his newly-constructed life, and it was very important to him that he could find ways of managing that without going mad.

Bond arrived home in the evening, and they found themselves indulging in a form of domesticity that they hadn’t quite managed before. It felt like married life had always been rumoured to feel like, and honestly, Q was rather fond.

“James,” Q asked, cross-legged on the bed, wand in hand and laptop on lap, “how do you feel about children?”

“I’m not overly fond, but then, I was a teacher,” Bond teased; Q twisted slightly, placing the laptop on its side to avoid blocking the vents on the underside – something most wizards had yet to understand, and had very nearly caused a fire a few days previously when Arthur left the laptop alone on a pillow – and looking at his partner. “Oh dear. So serious you put the laptop down.”

Q shot him a mildly exasperated look. “James...”

“Alright, yes,” Bond interjected, hands raised, entirely placatory. “Alright. Children. In the current climate…”

“… obviously not right now,” Q cut in, “but in a few years, maybe? It can’t keep going forever, our lives can’t be on hold forever – you’re the Order, I know that, it’s who you are, I just…”

“It’s fine,” Bond completed, not quite making his valiant attempt at a smile reach his eyes. “Q. I know. I want children too, at some stage, but I can’t think about that right now. Merlin… Q, there’s always the chance that something will happen to one or both of us, and I don’t think it’s fair to leave a small child with Mycroft.”

“Touché,” Q smirked, reaching out, brushing fingers over Bond’s hand. “Look – James, I just want to think about it properly. Thing is, what do we do if this still isn’t resolved in a year, two, three? You’re going to be thirty-three in September. We don’t have forever, and you’re going to want… I mean, what do we _do_ when things go back to normal, _if_ they go back to normal? I’m teaching next year, I’m back in Hogwarts, and you… what do we do once you’re back in a full time job, rent, food, family…”

Bond managed to stall what was looking to become a full-scale mildly hysterical rant, bringing Q’s hand to his own lips briefly, blue eyes startlingly intense. “When this all stops, when the Order disbands,” he said slowly, carefully, “I will explore work in Hogwarts again, in the Ministry. I can’t, right now, I’m needed elsewhere before everything goes completely to shit…”

“… I _know_ …”

“… but afterwards, we will actually _have_ a life to explore and to build,” Bond completed, his tone an open apology.

Q could hear the subtext, could hear the possibilities and the fears: this would take potentially the rest of the lives, and if it did, they would never be able to have a family. Bond would not – and to be honest, nor could Q – start a family with one parent one of the leading members of the Order of the Phoenix, with the other sequestered in Hogwarts for a good amount of the year.

Somewhere, Q began to harbour the understanding that he may never have the family he had always wanted, for reasons he had never been able to explain. Friends had always shrugged and not cared, Sherlock thought it actively bizarre, and Mycroft had unintentionally become a parent to both of his siblings at a young age; he certainly didn't want any of his own. In some regards, Q thought of Mycroft more as a parent than a sibling, if he was quite honest. It was odd.

Either way; Bond seemed to notice Q growing a little subdued, and brought him into a close embrace, letting Q mourn the loss of what had never been.

The next day found Q, Bond, Irene and Tonks sitting at the kitchen table; Q was contentedly drinking Earl Grey, discussing aspects of Metamorphmagi trickery that he was hoping to use in some of his recent tech endeavours. Irene and Bond were involved in a lower-key conversation, listening to the radio and commenting lightly on various bits of it.

“ _I HAVE AN EAR AGAIN!_ ”

The bellows echoed through the house; George ran in, showing off his ear, doing a quick twirl. “What d’you think?!” he said excitedly to the somewhat confused collection. “I’m not lopsided!”

“You’re not me!” a voice said from the doorway; another Weasley twin entered, and Q shook his head wearily, as they engaged in more jokes about their almost-renewed status as identical twins. George was recognisable due to the oversized bandage wrapped around his head, protecting his apparently-stitched ear.

John entered a moment later, pushing through the sparring twins. “I have no idea if it’ll hold, or whether Dark magic will just reject it, but yes, George has an ear again. Not a very aesthetically pleasing one, it has to be said, but it’s better than a hole in the side of his head.”

Q couldn’t quite believe John had managed it; he gave the man a round of applause as he sat tiredly at the kitchen table. “That’s extraordinary.”

“That was a bloody nightmare,” John admitted, accepting a tea with exceptional gratitude. “How’s the wedding planning going?”

Tonks shook her head wearily, glancing briefly at her own ring in a way that made Q imagine she was probably ridiculously grateful hers had been a quiet affair. “Molly has lost her mind,” she said, succinctly covering the events of the past few days.

There was absolutely no room in the Burrow. Everybody was sharing, people were sleeping on floors with inflatable mattresses, there was genuine talk of a temporary extension to the side of the Burrow, everybody under the age of eighteen had been roped into non-stop manic tidying in the light of the soon-arriving Delacour family.

Meanwhile, everybody was trying to work out what on earth to do with a Muggle, Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Potter. Really, there couldn’t have conceivably been a worse collection of people to try and get under one roof without anybody noticing the problems.

The Delacours arrived; everybody was rather uncertain of how to deal with quite so many Veela in a confined space – the Delacours were delightfully patient with Irene, who had become infinitely more social as she recovered – and more importantly, sleeping arrangements became nigh on hilarious.

A frantic reshuffle culminated in Ginny moving into the twins’ room with them – she had rarely seemed happier – while Fleur and Gabrielle took Ginny’s. Charlie and Bill stayed in Charlie’s room, the Weasley parents took the living room, the Delacour parents remained in the master bedroom, Q, Bond, Sherlock and John all remained in Bill and Percy’s room respectively.

Irene was technically still recovering, and required medical supervision – Molly Hooper had been staying in the Burrow, happily sleeping on floors and being exceptionally helpful in wedding planning, as it happened – and so Ron’s room was evacuated to make way for her and Molly.

Ron, Harry, and Hermione would sleep in the kitchen on conjured mattresses. Mrs Weasley’s unhappiness at the situation barely had words – she didn’t like the three being left together in any confined space whatsoever – but there were no options.

Finally, it was left to Draco to decide what he wanted to do.

The boy didn’t speak, of course. Nobody wanted to make decisions for him, when he would be perfectly capable of doing so himself; he just remained resolutely silent, until Molly killed several birds with one stone insofar as plotting went, and suggested he sleep in the kitchen with Ron, Harry and Hermione.

Honestly, the response was almost funny: Ron looked horrified, Hermione just shocked, and Harry agreed without much hesitation. Draco, when he was told, just arched an eyebrow, his expression the living embodiment of _and?_

Q watched with interest in vague suspicion, quietly prayed that Draco wouldn’t try and throttle anybody in their sleep, and otherwise left them to their own devices.

“You worry too much,” Bond told him absentmindedly, the night before Harry’s birthday; Q had seen Draco disappear with the others to sleep downstairs, still resolutely silent and with eyes ferociously intense, and now Q couldn’t get him out of his head.

Q glanced up from his piles of disgorged camera pieces, a lens settled at right angles, wearily adjusting various pieces by increments while wondering vaguely what his life had become. “Draco Malfoy has had a nasty enough time of life without anybody making it worse,” Q said absentmindedly, and grinned abruptly to himself, before muttering: “I need a word with the twins.”

“Coming to bed?” Bond asked, a few minutes later, while Q was still frenetically sorting out various minutiae and visibly tiring.

A small glance up, and Q’s smile was a shy and lovely thing, everything Bond had always loved about the man. “Just give me one minute,” he asked; Bond nodded, and settled in to watch as Q tidied everything away into cupboards and drawers, his wandwork so _neat_. Barely a year ago, Q had barely been able to levitate cat food without causing spillages everywhere.

Bond was watching his husband grow older, and he didn’t quite know what to think about it. “I’ll fall asleep if you’re not careful,” he warned.

Q laughed, standing in an easy – albeit wobbly – motion, and practically pounced into Bond’s arms. “No sex, I’m sleepy,” Q yawned at him, nuzzling into Bond’s front and giggling as Bond’s fingers strayed over his ribs, batting him away gently and listening to the distant sounds of the various members of the Burrow sleeping, talking, shouting, whispering, the hum of a cooker and a kettle’s whistle, the composite sounds of what Q honestly considered his home.

One day, he and Bond would have a place of their own. One day, the Order would disband and Bond would not be as vital to the interior workings of a dangerous secret society, and Q’s siblings wouldn’t be the most-wanted of most of the Wizarding world, and it would all end. Even Bill and Fleur would be moving into their own place; Bill was a good wizard, but not exactly a lynchpin of the Order, and they could safely hide themselves away somewhere until the worst was over.

Somehow, Q had found himself at the epicentre.

Bond’s breathing steadied, flattened out, and Q kept a palm against his sternum to feel the heart and breath beneath, acutely aware of the impossible frailty.


	6. Chapter 6

Harry’s birthday opened quite explosively, it had to be said, given the unexpected presence of Draco Malfoy and the general confusion of surrounding events.

Draco had attempted an escape, and decided to go about it by cursing Harry; Ron had woken in time to correspondingly jinx the living daylights out of Malfoy, before Hermione had intervened and diffused the situation with all four winding up at opposite ends of the kitchen.

Ultimately the morning wound up with Draco still in studious silence, Harry none the worse for wear other than quite angry, and Q was just quite tired of it all; he was asked by a somewhat bemused Molly – who had quite enough to be worrying about - if he would _please_ just talk to the boys.

Utter silence from Draco. Passive aggressive staring from Harry. Ron and Hermione had been excused elsewhere, given that the bulk of the problem had been with Harry and Draco.

“Both of you,” Q snapped eventually. “Alright. This is ridiculous. Draco, I know you’re angry, but the silent treatment _ends here_. You’re both acting like children, and nobody has the luxury of that right now. I don’t exactly want to stay here and mediate, but I will if you don’t both start acting your actual bloody ages _right now_ , do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” Harry muttered.

Of course, Draco said nothing. “Verbal confirmation, Draco, if you would. Staying mute won’t keep them safe.”

Draco’s mouth opened in an actual, honest-to-god _hiss_. “Better,” Q acknowledged, with a hefty amount of sarcasm. “Now for words?”

“If I must,” he returned, with the silken anger of a true serpent. “I won’t speak to Potter, however.”

Q raised an eyebrow. “You’ll be in here a while, then,” he commented drily, unimpressed at the histrionics. “For Merlin’s sake. Why are you so angry with _him_ , of all people?”

The silence was expansive and self-explanatory. Harry’s eyes had gone saucer-like, and Draco kept flicking livid, aggressive glances in his direction like loose javelins. “Draco…”

“It wasn’t my fault. You weren’t speaking to me, _he_ was threatening my family, it’s _different_ for me, I…”

“I’m going to leave the pair of you to talk,” Q said quietly. “If either of you start behaving like five-year-olds, I will intervene once again.”

It was not Q’s to witness; he disappeared without waiting for an answer, left the two young men to manage whatever stilted and probably abortive attempt at a conversation they would be able to conduct, his chest aching slightly. Honestly, he was past the point of caring whether they would have been happy together, whether their pasts were retrievable or how they could work. It would be enough to see either party just a little bit happier.

“Where’s the birthday boy?” Mrs Weasley asked immediately, as Q appeared.

Q accepted a monstrously large plate of eggs, settling at the rather crowded kitchen table with the two Weasley parents, and Fred. “He’ll be down in a minute. Great eggs, Molly.”

Mrs Weasley smiled contentedly, seemingly in the process of constructing yet more food for Q as Ron and Hermione came back in from the yard outside. “Are they…?”

“Leave it,” Q advised through a mouthful of eggs; Mrs Weasley seemed to note the tension, immediately accosting both teenagers with food of their own. “Anybody seen Sherlock?”

“Not yet,” Fred returned, through a mouthful of his own, chastised briefly by his mother before Draco and Harry returned to the room.

Mercifully, nobody chose to make too much of it. Ron was visibly tense but tactfully quiet, and Hermione seemed to be channelling Holmesian deductive habits as she scanned the two boys intently. “Presents!” Fred said loudly, pushing the pile towards Harry and near enough knocking the entire collection over.

Bond arrived after a few minutes, standing behind Q’s chair with a mug of coffee while Harry ripped through his presents. Q and Bond had opted for something conceivably practical: an engraved, bottomless hipflask. Neither were under any delusions that Harry would be disappearing elsewhere into the Wizarding world, and the flask could potentially hold any liquid or potion.

Harry thanked them with sincerity – his eyes darted from Q to Draco and back, and Q wondered but didn’t ask – before stashing the flask in his pocket.

The morning passed merrily enough. Mycroft was busy for the duration outside the Burrow with something Q didn’t enquire about too closely, Sherlock was practising magic upstairs.

“Want a hand?” Q asked lightly, watching Sherlock aim impeccable jinxes at the far end of the room. “Duelling’s easier with two. We could head outside for a bit, rather than trashing in here.”

Sherlock glanced over his younger sibling, and after a moment of contemplation, nodded. “The Quidditch field?”

“Probably best,” Q agreed. “I’d prefer Molly not to get antsy…”

Downstairs, Bond glanced up as they entered. At the table, Fleur and Draco were sat with sketched-out papers, Draco’s smile perilously close to genuine, actually _speaking_ as he quietly discussed and amended some of Fleur’s clothing designs. Apparently, it had become something of a point of contact.

Hermione, shortly after, could be heard bickering with Ron and Harry: “We need to discuss…”

“Trained teachers, we could get tips…”

“ _Fine_.”

Shortly after that, Harry, Ron and Hermione joined all those headed Quidditch-pitch-wards. The twins and John also joined – John because he was very simply nosy, and the twins to poke fun and learn what they could from somebody like Bond.

Sherlock and Q began.

Q, over the preceding couple of years, had become quite the dueller. The speed of movement and the intensity tended to exacerbate the old injuries, the familiar things that never quite left him any longer; yet, he had an innovation and reflexive brilliance that served him well.

Sherlock was slower, but the man was raw power. Q could feel the shattering impact of his spells reverberating off his own Shield Charms, staggered by the sheer force as they ricocheted off. “Fuck,” he murmured, as they reached a stop. “Nicely done, speed is needed.”

Apparently, being told what to do by a younger sibling didn’t sit well; Sherlock’s expression turned mutinous. “I would have had you, were we not playfighting,” he commented cuttingly.

Bond stepped in, and gave Sherlock a short bow. “Whenever you are ready,” he stated coolly.

Q got the hell out of the way, as did everybody else.

Sweet Merlin, Bond was an extraordinary dueller. Sherlock was pathetically outclassed – something that made Q feel rather smug – and Bond was just _beautiful_.

“Alright,” Q called after a point. “Everybody, two teams, since you’re all here. Hermione, Fred, George – with Sherlock. Harry, Ron, you come with me and James. We’re going to try fighting as teams.”

It was a fairly even match. Bond outclassed most of them, but then also had by far the most experience; in their teams, everybody began to learn the necessary arts of how to work with other people’s strengths, other weaknesses.

Fighting as a collective takes a type of universal mindset, an understanding and appreciation; Harry was an imperfect but passionate fighter, Ron was pragmatic and shockingly instinctive when it came to a larger setting – Q narrowly avoided a Stunner that Ron managed to deflect, heartbeats before Ron similarly saved Harry from a similar fate – and Q watched the others with fascination.

The twins were a cohesive unit. Both had excellent wandwork for two boys who had barely made it through school, and their priorities were one another. Hermione was technically the most accomplished caster of the lot barring Bond himself, but her brilliance came when she relaxed and let instinct drive; at that stage, Q was hit with a well-deserved Stinging Jinx, and had to wait for Bond to retrieve him.

It certainly passed the time, and Q loved to teach. They completely forgot about lunch, in fact, until Mrs Weasley called down and they all decamped to consume large quantities of her somewhat famed turnip soup.

The kids went off somewhere, presumably to talk amongst themselves, Bond had work; Q found himself helping Mrs Weasley bake a monstrously large Snitch. Q had always loved baking – Mycroft had taught him how, one summer when Q had stayed with him and Sherlock in the Muggle world – and found himself being rather useful.

The evening opened with the single largest number of people Q had ever seen attempt to occupy one space, and that included Christmases in Grimmauld Place. The Burrow was simply not made to hold so many bodies, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to make a valiant effort; tables were placed end to end, food produced in mass quantities, no set seats and people just moving freeform around the garden as the mood hit them.

That was the plan, anyway.

Tonks, Remus and Mycroft arrived in near-enough tandem; Q happily bowled his brother over in a hug which left Mycroft predictably uncomfortable, before collecting whatever tidbits of knowledge he happened to possess – minimal, given that he wasn’t in a conversational mood – before settling him down at the table next to Hagrid.

Arthur was late, held up; eventually, his Patronus arrived: _Minister for Magic coming with me_.

Never had a group of people moved so fast.

Tonks and Remus vanished instantly. Sherlock, John and Mycroft spirited themselves indoors for obvious reasons – Mycroft should have Apparated away, but refused to leave his brother unprotected – along with Draco and Irene. Draco would have been interrogated to within an inch of his life had the Ministry located him, and Irene had dropped off the edge of the map as far as the Ministry was concerned and it was best she stayed that way.

Bond stayed, given that he was technically no longer on the Ministry’s radar. “I strongly suspect the Ministry has other priorities,” he muttered drily to Q, who couldn’t help but agree.

Indeed: Harry, Hermione and Ron were whisked away almost instantly, and Bond barely glanced at. It was Q’s first time in real proximity to their Minister for Magic, and he wasn’t entirely sure he liked the man; Scrimgeour seemed a leonine and not altogether pleasant character, with a disingenuous smile and gruff demeanour.

Within a handful of minutes, there was audible yelling from indoors. “We’ll go,” Arthur said quickly, he and Molly bolting in to find their son and his two closest friends, to establish that nobody had killed anybody in the short space of time they had been otherwise occupied.

A moment after that, and Scrimgeour stomped – there was really no better word for it, the man screamed petulance – out of the house, and Apparated away. “Good riddance,” Bond muttered to Q, who managed a small smile but didn’t otherwise respond much.

With the coast clear, everybody piled back out of the house. “The Ministry released the contents of Dumbledore’s will,” Harry explained, still looking tight-jawed and tangibly angry. “He left me the sword of Godric Gryffindor, and a snitch.”

“What?” Fred asked, as Mycroft’s eyes darted over Harry and the fact that he was quite evidently not holding a sword. “A _snitch_?”

“A Golden Snitch. As in, the Quidditch ball,” Harry amended, and handed it over. Hermione made a line for Q meanwhile, and showed him a very tattered copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ ; Q allowed himself a moment of nostalgia, before opening it and trying to work out what possible reason Dumbledore may have had for bequeathing it to Hermione.

There was nothing immediately obvious. Runes were a subset of Arithmancy from time to time, they borrowed concepts, and Q scanned but could find little of worth; Irene picked it up a little later, spoke to Hermione in a low voice and evidently illustrated a fair amount of Ancient Rune knowledge, judging by Hermione’s expression.

The Deluminator, while quite good fun, seemed to have similarly no purpose – but none as much as the Snitch, which seemed to have nothing on it whatsoever; everybody handed it around, trying to work something out, before it accidently wound up in Draco’s hands.

Draco smirked at it, very faintly, glancing up at Harry before returning attention to the Snitch itself; Q didn’t quite see the moment his eyes widened, lips moving with quiet confusion, his fist closing convulsively over it before releasing by necessity to return to its rightful owner.

“Harry dear, everybody’s awfully hungry…”

Q couldn’t have been happier for the intervention; lunch felt like a very long time ago, and the cake was looking more important by the microsecond. He practically kept pace with Hagrid throughout the meal, much to Bond’s visible amusement, singing along with Happy Birthday and noting in the process that Irene had a truly beautiful voice.

As time went on, Q honestly had to concede that the woman probably wasn’t the antichrist, but couldn’t help the repulsion at himself for really liking Irene a _lot_ better when still recovering from a severely traumatic event. The arrogance and veneer had disappeared, and while Q truly _did_ wish it had been in better circumstances, it didn’t quite alter that some of her less palatable traits had vanished.

It was an uncomfortable thought, and so Q sublimated it all by eating a fair amount more cake than he could really stomach, and regretting not a mouthful of it.

The evening tailed off quite quickly, mainly to preserve Mrs Weasley’s blood pressure. Everybody dispersed to their various rooms, Q watching the various kids congregate together and speak in low and very subtle voices while Draco lingered, looking like he was on the verge of speech but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

“There’s writing on it,” Q heard him say, a little gruffly, as Ron and Hermione’s voices built to a climax in their otherwise almost-quiet bickering; the muttering all stopped, everybody turning to Draco with undisguised confusion. “On the Snitch. You missed it.”

Q’s curiosity very nearly got the better of him. Without a timely intervention from Sherlock – whom Q knew was probably in a rather nostalgic mood after _Beedle_ , much like Q admittedly was – Q would have wound up asking far too many questions about matters that didn’t concern him.

Instead, he wound up in bed with Bond, curled against his chest. “Wedding tomorrow,” he pointed out in the dark, Bond’s breathing regular and heartbeat anchoring. “Can’t believe it’s been over a year since ours.”

Bond kissed the top of his head, and practically fell asleep on the spot, leaving Q to fondly giggle about his husband’s occasional inability to recognise profundity when it attempted to rear its head at unsuspecting moments.

-

Q prayed to all the gods, Muggle and Wizarding alike, that Mrs Weasley hadn’t been quite so draconian on his own wedding day when he hadn’t been around. She was a nightmare; even Mycroft was suitably cowed, doing precisely as ordered given that she was extremely likely to destroy anybody in the vicinity who upset her.

Anybody adult and vaguely responsible was hooked into the preparations. Q desperately tried and failed to keep himself busy elsewhere, shooting envious looks at Bond as he cited an Order-related venture that was probably entirely false, just to keep himself away from Mrs Weasley’s nightmarish pedantry, and – when she thought nobody was looking – her tears concerning her absent child.

Percy had never been likely to turn up. It didn’t make it any easier that he hadn’t. Thus Mrs Weasley cried, and everybody tried to make her feel better to minimal avail.

Irene, Draco, Sherlock and John were unable to attend; there was no feasible way to disguise all of them. Harry was able to go simply because they had enough Polyjuice to make it manageable, and all of the Weasleys were very close to the boy. Mycroft was staying behind in case of emergency.

The wedding itself was exquisitely beautiful. Q found himself unable to quite let go of Bond, smiling in a way that made him feel like a teenager all over again and somewhat shocked to find Bond’s expression mirroring; the difference between them and the Lupins, therefore, was somewhat marked.

Fleur Delacour was terrifying gorgeous, radiant in a way that seemed to light the entire marquis, much like Bond had when Q had seen him “ _I’ll never forget what you looked like_ ”, Bond murmured surreptitiously into his ear, as the minister started to speak. “ _I couldn’t describe it._ ”

Q squeezed his hand, and couldn’t suppress his grin as Fleur and Bill kissed, the pair joined in matrimony and Old Magic running through the veins of the ground around them, Hagrid sniffling and Hermione Granger holding onto Ron’s hand, and Q decided that there were few things as lovely in the world as a wedding.

Not to mention that Merlin above, he loved to dance.

True, he was terrible at it. This time, he was able to levitate himself slightly, unlike Minerva at his own wedding; his health was better, but his balance remained steadfastly non-existent. “That’s cheating.”

“That’s magic,” Q muttered back, laughing at Bond’s expression as the band struck up, Bill and Fleur looking painfully beautiful and perfectly happy as they moved around the dance floor, conversations striking at various points around the tent, faces Q hadn’t seen or heard of in forever crawling out of the woodwork.

 _The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming_.


	7. Chapter 7

Q didn’t even see where it had come from.

A moment of suspension.

Abruptly, everybody was screaming. Within a second or two, there were flashes of light; Q had his wand out, yelling out Shield Charms while his eyes ranged for Bond, trying to trace the people he loved, seeing Hermione, Ron and Harry Disapparate as figures began to appear and wedding guests disappeared with equal speed.

The defences around the wedding had shattered, and a heartbeat later, it occurred: _Sherlock_.

No sooner had the thought impacted, then a spell slammed into him; immediately paralysed, Q could only scream internally and pray to Merlin and gods alike that Mycroft had moved fast enough. They would kill John on sight, and his presence would be enough to immediately condemn the entire Weasley family and all who had been staying there. Sherlock was still keeping himself away from the Wizarding world for good reason, let alone Death Eaters, Irene needed help, Draco. _Draco_.

A distant scream of his name, and Q remained stranded, the spell gradually disintegrating to leave the echoes and a tingling sensation in his fingers. The silence crawled, very suddenly, as everybody realised they were severely outnumbered and simply couldn’t protect themselves.

One stepped forward, and fired gunshot-like sounds into the air. Silence and attention were immediate.

“We want Harry Potter,” he called, voice carrying easily. “Cooperate, and you will not be harmed.”

Q glanced around as best he could. Most had their wands out, of those that were left, and a decent number were Order members. The entire Weasley family, of course, the Delacours. The Lovegoods had clearly managed an exit, along with Elphias Doge, and a couple of other Order members from the periphery had disappeared.

Victor Krum remained, standing tall in front of a terrified-looking Gabrielle Delacour. Fleur was the epitome of terrible beauty, hair in convulsive strands, wand extended; Q could remember now why she was an Order member, why she was very well respected indeed. Fleur Delacour was quite a formidable witch.

“ _Where is Harry Potter?_ ”

Everybody was absolutely silent. Many of them had no idea Harry had ever been there in the first place, and were tangibly confused; the rest were straight-backed and proud, prepared to defend Harry to the ends of the earth and back.

“We will not ask again,” another figure snapped. “Our mercy can only extend so far.”

There was no warning. Abruptly, Bill folded inwards as though hit in the stomach, struggling for air; there were some cries of horror and Fleur baring her teeth in a vicious snarl, but still no voices, terror rendering everybody silent. It was exceptional just how many had managed to get away, and indeed who had made the idiotic decision to stay.

“Again, _where is Harry Potter_?!”

Silence.

“Split them off,” one of them barked to a fellow, and the figures slid into and through the remaining wedding guests, separating off the dangerous from one another and crowding the obviously useless ones into a single space. Everybody knew who had Order affiliations anyway, there was no point pretending or denying; the Ministry was You-Know-Who’s, and they all had known since forever.

It was going to get unpleasant, and Q knew that, watching Bill straighten and locating Bond out of the corner of his eye.

A sudden whistle, splitting the dark. “Would y’look what we found?!” crowed a more distant voice, sauntering from the direction of the Burrow itself, a male figure dangling by the ankle.

It was, without a doubt, the single most undignified position Q had ever seen his eldest brother in.

That was Q’s first thought. The second was in tangible, almost physically painful relief at the fact that Sherlock wasn’t there – and neither, it seemed, was John. Unless they were already dead, of course, but Q really had no interest in contemplating that option right at that precise second.

Mycroft was cast into a crumpled heap into the middle of the tent. Q attempted a step forward, was immediately stalled by a wand inches from his face; he could feel the repercussive tension, remained warily still for a moment. Q watched Mycroft’s face for clues, found nothing but dangerously studious blankness.

“The house is being searched.”

Mycroft’s expression didn’t change, but Q wasn’t happy; there was something wrong, there was something keeping Mycroft from genuine calm, and Q watched as Mycroft was circled by the leader of the new arrivals. “Where is Harry Potter?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Mycroft returned, in a tone that bordered on insolent.

Another wand flick; Mycroft grunted as an invisible force struck him in the ribs with a muffled snap, in the lower back, and he crumpled slightly before picking himself up, eyes now sparking anger outright while the rest remained caught, wands holding them in place.

“Anybody who cares to be helpful – this is your chance,” the figure yelled, now getting angry herself. “ _Where is Harry Potter?!_ ”

Silence billowed, and there was a moment of perfect stillness. “Understood,” their assailant hissed, and glanced around. “Take them,” she continued, gesturing at Bond, Mycroft, Tonks and Fred.

“You will not touch my children,” Arthur Weasley said, stepping forward instantly, beaten back with another couple of quick hexes; Mrs Weasley found herself propping him back up as blood leaked from a cut on his lip. “Fred, stay back.”

Q moved closer to Fred, prepared to defend as required, the twins covering one another’s backs in a rather admirable fighting stance. “They are adults, and potentially harbouring a dangerous fugitive,” another figure added, with gorgeous coolness, dangerous calm. “Any underage wizards will naturally be accompanied by their parents. We do not want this to become unpleasant. For the sake of your families, simply cooperate with us. Arthur…”

“… Aaron?” Arthur responded, in disbelief. “You’re condoning this?!”

“The Ministry is only here for the protection of the wider Wizarding community, and currently, we are facing one of the greatest threats…”

“Yeah, and you’re chasing Harry Potter instead!” George Weasley yelled at them. “Go after You-Know-Who, that’s who’s actually a bloody threat!”

Silence; everybody cringed, waiting for the seemingly inevitable curses to hit George, in revenge for his words.

Nothing. Instead, the boy was just Immobilised, and the Death Eater contingents peeled off those who needed interrogation; everybody did as told while Mrs Weasley deftly healed the cut to Arthur’s lip, Mycroft regained posture and dignity with remarkable efficiency, Q quickly mobilised George again and told him sharply to _not say a word, not now_ which he grimaced at but nodded.

Bond quickly looked for Q’s eyes; he shot a small smile, encouraging, as Ministry figures swamped Bond and confiscated his wand, ready for interrogation. Tonks was refusing to relinquish hers – Remus snapped at her, short words – and Fred was busy trying to convince his family that he would be alright on his own.

The scream came from the Burrow.

“ _No_ ,” Q managed, on a strangled breath, immediately twisting towards the Burrow with something very close to desperation.

Mycroft’s expression was identical to Q’s own.

Sherlock was never going to be taken captive quietly. He was _screaming_ , shattering the encroaching midnight with his cries, bound up and livid and terrified in a way Q could see lining every shadow of his face.

The Ministry had taken Sherlock once before, and in doing so, had destroyed everything Sherlock was. They couldn’t do so again, it would kill him, and the grief Q could read through him was terrifying given that John was very, very absent.

“Harbouring Sherlock Holmes,” the voice told them, with mocking curiosity. “And kidnapping Draco Malfoy…”

Q could have retched; they had found Draco, they would take the boy away again to be delivered into the hands of those that would probably kill him. Instead, Q found his grip tightening on his wand.

No mention, nor sign, of John or Irene.

Mycroft was watching Q. Not Sherlock – who was currently drawing the attention of literally everybody in the vicinity, just because it was _Sherlock Holmes_ reduced to a screeching type of child, battling out and kicking and biting and utilising a lot of Muggle combat methods that had managed some effect, if the broken nose on one figure was anything to go by – but no, Mycroft was watching _Q_.

Oddly, Q knew quite instinctively, and knew it was the right decision.

Draco was screaming too, and Q couldn’t look around _don’t take me back, somebody please, don’t let them take me, please_ and so took a breath, and made his choice.

Ultimately, it would always be family. For better or worse, he would always protect his family.

Mycroft was very close, very close indeed. Only a step or two to slide his own wand into Mycroft’s grip, watch it spirited away up his cloak sleeve. Q was terrified at the prospect of not having a wand, but he would hopefully be able to adopt Mycroft’s when this little plan unfolded in full.

Sherlock needed to be taken a very long way away, very quickly. If Q was right, then Mycroft would have got John out first; presumably, he hadn’t been left with enough time to then look after Sherlock. Perhaps this had even been his plan, Q mused, as he watched Mycroft settle. It wouldn’t surprise him too much.

Draco Malfoy was being wrestled into some type of submission by the Ministry representatives. “Where is Harry Potter?” one of them asked, something of a common mantra now.

To Q’s peculiar pride, Draco just spat at the man’s feet.

It should have been obvious, but somehow, Q hadn’t anticipated Draco being dragged out of perimeter of the once-marquis, out of the range of the anti-Apparition spells that had been set up almost immediately, and taken away by Side-Along Apparition.

“ _Mycroft_ , I won’t go back.”

Sherlock, looking up at Mycroft with naked terror, for perhaps the first time in Q’s memory; Sherlock did anger and electricity, he didn’t do fear, he certainly didn’t do true terror. “Calm yourself, Sherlock,” Mycroft said gently, before turning to the Death Eater flanking. “May I have a moment with my sibling? I have no wand, nor any desire to cause harm.”

Mycroft was released, and dear Merlin above, but they all should have thought through allowing Mycroft any actual freedom.

The Death Eaters were conjuring small tents, more intimate spaces in which to interrogate their victims. Tonks was pulled into one by three rather burly men, Fred into another, and Bond shot his own interrogators a truly extraordinary smirk as he was led into a third.

Merlin above, Q loved his family. He loved their intelligence, and their dysfunction, and the simple fact that they were efficient in the extreme, and could get things done in an exceptionally short amount of time and with near enough no fallout.

Nobody had anticipated that Sherlock would have a wand – far less know how to use it – and they believed Mycroft unarmed; when the pair of them stood, in a single fluid motion, and began casting, the shock afforded them a precious handful of seconds.

Q had seen them move, and hit the floor in a second; everybody else was busy casting defensive spells, and Q really didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire, instead watching with an unapologetic grin as Mycroft and Sherlock – the latter with less finesse, but exceptional power, anger and fear lending one particular jinx strength enough to cleave earth from the ground in a large boulder – fought their way out, and the moment they were out of range, Mycroft grabbed Sherlock and Disapparated.

It was tempting to give them a round of applause.

Instead, Q found himself hoisted up by the throat. “You knew they were about to do that.”

There was no point in denying it. “They both had wands, Mycroft wouldn’t let Sherlock stay here, you’d have killed him in the end,” Q pointed out, as breathing became a little harder, limbs a little loose.

“He _didn’t_ have a wand!” one of them cried, brandishing Mycroft’s wand; Q glanced up, and realised there were fairly few choices left to him:

“That’s mine.”

Every single head in the vicinity turned to him, a little unsurprisingly. Most people knew full well that it was Mycroft’s wand, which left fairly few options as to how Mycroft had got hold of one.

Low murmurs, the figure holding Mycroft’s wand looking between Q and it in disbelief; he stalked closer – there was still a hand on Q’s throat, and his vision was starting to swim a little – and scanned over Q, tangibly livid.

“Wait.”

A newer voice, younger this time and half-familiar, who came in closer and looked over Q with tangible interest, eyes bright: “He’s the other Holmes.”

Q couldn’t help but wish Bond was around, rather than being interrogated elsewhere; Bond tended to be quite a good anchor in situations like this, when Death Eaters were swarming and Q had deigned to do something potentially suicidal.

The sudden jolt of recognition, and everything kicked up a gear; Q wasn’t even granted wandwork, was simply punched in the solar plexus and collapsed with a winded exhale of air, hearing various voices shouting out behind him.

All of the guests had disintegrated to smaller groups, now. George had found Ginny and his parents in a ginger collective, all of them waiting for Fred’s emergence. The Delacour parents had Gabrielle tightly clutched to them, her face guarded from seeing the violent realities of a world now run by You-Know-Who.

There was a sharp cry from Tonks’s tent.

Remus took a spasmodic step forward, the Weasleys looking to where Fred had been taken, Q to Bond; the split of loyalties was clever, everybody too concentrated in different areas to form a tangible defence. Q could only thank Merlin above that Sherlock and Mycroft were now gone; the only way to break down Mycroft would be to threaten his family, and if his loyalties were split between Q and Sherlock, Q himself had no idea what would transpire.

Remus was ignoring urgent glances from Charlie, who rolled his eyes, and shouted at the nearest Death Eater;

“She’s _pregnant_. Do not touch her, do I make myself clear?” he snapped; Remus’s mouth was a thin line, almost wild in his complete lack of control, Q breathing in sharply. He hadn’t known.

Said Death Eater looked deeply unimpressed, but rolled her eyes regardless. “I’ll check, shall I?” she asked, with lethal politeness, stepping into the tent and leaving Remus behind, practically trembling with anger.

There was no sign of Irene, which Q supposed boded well; hopefully, Molly Hooper would have managed to transport them both out relatively quickly. The pair spent a good proportion of their time together, even now Irene was mostly physically recovered; nobody knew Molly in the Order, but – like Irene – she had rather lost the option of leaving.

To the day he died, Q would never forgive himself for not protecting Draco better. He had deserved so much better, more than Q could have given him, but – just perhaps – Draco could have been spared a decent amount of pain.

Those considerations were a little bit secondary, given that Q was being reminded quite why he had never liked people knowing he was a Holmes. Anger and words and snapped sentences were being thrown around with lethal abandon, and the night had reached the stage wherein everybody knew that to object was pointless, so Q just let himself be wrenched up and cast into a side-tent, with several figures, Death Eater and Ministry alike. There was no point in distinguishing any more, they were essentially the same thing.

“Your name?”

“Q Bond,” Q replied, with ease, and no small degree of pride.

“Your _full_ name.”

“Q. Bond,” Q repeated. “You can have a glance at my marriage certificate, if you like. I took his name.”

“You have a first name?”

Q decided to opt for sarcastic confusion rather than acknowledgement, on the grounds that it would be more satisfying in the long term. “I’ve told you twice, I believe, unless a Confundus charm hit: Q. My name is Q. That is what I am called.”

A sharp blow to the side of the head. “Ow,” Q noted aloud, righting himself, a little more cautious now, quiet. “Look, seriously. I’m known as Q. I had a different name when – as you have all so generously pointed out – I was a member of the Holmes family. I’m not any longer.”

“The Holmeses are all known sympathisers of Harry Potter,” the man opposite him stated, “as, I believe, you must be. You are a teacher in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”

“Arithmancy, yes, although I taught Transfiguration for a year,” Q returned. “Yes, I taught Harry Potter. I also taught the rest of the school. Somehow, I’m guessing that isn’t what you’re going to want to hear. I don’t know where he is.”

The last, at least, was completely honest: Q had no idea where the three would have vanished to. They had been planning for a while to leave, so presumably they had plans and/or options, and would hopefully be nigh on untraceable.

“And the Order of the Phoenix?”

Q raised an eyebrow. “The what?” he asked politely.

A punch hit him in the jaw; Q’s head snapped back, and he instinctively flinched backwards, trying to reach for a wand that was no longer there in an attempt to defend himself. “We have it on good authority that you are a member of these terrorists?”

With great restraint, Q managed to not repeat _terrorists?!_ in a tone of utter incredulity; instead, he said something arguably more idiotic: “Terrorism? Like breaking into a peaceful wedding reception to terrorise the guests?”

An absentminded part of Q’s brain told him he was an idiot of the highest degree. The rest of Q wholeheartedly agreed, and thus he found himself trying to repress any further acts of idiocy with great fervour as his interrogator’s face reddened, and he prepared himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all wonderful creatures, thank you for reading. Your thoughts are forever and always appreciated! Jen.


	8. Chapter 8

Six hours later, and Q was extremely tired, and really bored of people hitting him for no explicable reason; his interrogators had grown irritable, Q had been a little difficult by his own admission and generally resented the entire affair. Bill and Fleur had deserved better than this, by a long margin.

Q had not been let out of the tent for so much as a second. They continued to question him endlessly, the same questions: the locations of Harry Potter, Mycroft and Sherlock, along with a few peripheral ones about the ‘abduction’ of Draco Malfoy.

Even if Q knew where any of them had gone, hell would freeze over long before he deigned to tell anybody. There were some educated guesses, even, as to where Sherlock and Mycroft would have gone – Q personally guessed the Holmes Manor, which had remained untouched since being bequeathed to Mycroft, and was stuffed rigid with Dark artefacts and memory – but even after hours of interrogation, he was no closer to saying anything.

Nine hours.

Q was half-asleep and extremely thirsty, his head was thumping, and he was frightened for the rest of the wedding guests; the tent was soundproof, of course, and almost anything could have been happening outside.

It was bright, blazing sunlight when they finally let him out, finally conceded defeat and let him stumble right into his husband’s arms. “Thank Merlin,” he heard Bond mutter. “Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”

“Nothing serious,” Q returned quickly, scanning around for any news of what had been happening.

Most people were sat around in little clusters, a fair few entirely absent – “they had no information, I think they worked it out quite quickly” – and a few were still being questioned.

“They let everybody else out after a few hours,” Bond explained. “They kept me almost as long as you, I’ve only been out about an hour or so, I reckon they thought I’d know whatever you did… Remus has been in there for a long time, they roughed up Charlie a bit… the twins are fine… Fleur is _livid_ , I think she’s scaring some people…”

“Any word on…”

Bond shook his head quickly, and Q fell utterly quiet instantly. There were some things it was best not to ask openly just yet, not with hostile forces still swarming the place. “Reckon they’ll let any of us go?”

“Not yet for us,” Bond told him honestly. “Molly and Arthur headed back a while ago with Ginny and the twins, Charlie left just before you emerged. Merlin, Q, I didn’t know what had happened – came out, had to have everything explained about Sherlock and Mycroft…”

There was something faintly surreal about discussing Mycroft, Sherlock and their lives as a whole while Death Eaters unapologetically listened in around the edges of the decimated marquis; it was rather ironic, how honest a conversation they were having.

Q tiredly sat himself down on the grass. “Any water anywhere?” he asked.

Bond shook his head. “They still have my wand,” he muttered, with palpable anger. “I don’t know how long they’ll keep us here, I expect they’ll continue to watch us either way…”

Remus stumbled out of a tent, and was all but accosted by Fleur; she guided Remus immediately over to where Tonks was propped up against what had once been a pillar of the marquis. “ _Remus_ ,” she managed, with tangible relief. “Are you alright?”

“Are you?!” he returned instantly, kneeling at Tonks’s side, looking over her; they began to speak in low voices, Remus’s hand clenching abruptly as a hand trailed over her side, resting briefly on her abdomen, glancing over her split lip. He – meanwhile – was mostly none the worse for wear.

Q was past the point of being particularly verbal. He just remained territorially close to Bond, who kept an arm carefully wrapped around Q’s shoulders, waiting as patiently as they could.

There was no announcement. Simply out of nowhere, every single Death Eater Disapparated, leaving the remnants of the Order and wedding behind; the makeshift tents vanished to leave a somewhat bemused Charlie and Bill still in place.

Bond and Remus exchanged glances. Q let out a slight breath. “Wands?”

There was a pile that had been simply left, all of their wands dumped unceremoniously and with no respect whatsoever; Bond moved quickly, distributing them out, handing Mycroft’s over to Q with a raised eyebrow and the evident statement that the subject was by no means closed.

Several Disapparated, Remus and Tonks included. Q, Bond, and all who had been in the Burrow began to head back; they left the carcass of their once-wedding marquis behind, far more concerned with establishing the relative safeties of those around.

The moment Q got into the house, he let out a slow breath, and tried to conjure a Patronus with irritating difficulty – Mycroft’s wand, an unforgiving birch affair with dragon heartstring, surprisingly heavy, didn’t like him much – and he eventually gave up, berating himself for his own idiocy as he surreptitiously pulled out one of his phones and simply texted.

_Stay where you are, I’ll come to you. Nobody hurt. Love you. Q._

Q glanced up, Bond and the Weasleys watching him. “I can’t say, don’t know who’s listening, but I’m dealing with it,” he said simply, looking over the rest of the Weasleys. “What do we know?”

“Kingsley should be here soon, he’s going to explain what happened at the Ministry. We need Mycroft back if we can – see if you can shake off any tails, and find him? Any news on Draco or…”

“Fuck, what happened to Irene? Molly?” Q asked abruptly, eyes wide; he would have worried about listeners, but everybody knew Irene was with the Order. They simply didn’t know _where_ , which remained the truly important point.

Mrs Weasley lifted her hands in a placatory gesture: “Irene’s disappeared, Molly’s upstairs, she was looking after Ron,” she explained, with a curious emphasis that Q didn’t quite recognise; Bond squeezed very slightly, and Q let the comment slide despite _knowing_ Ron was long gone. “They tortured Molly, trying to find Irene.”

Q’s eyes widened. “Is she alright?” he asked, with understandable horror.

“Sleeping now, she should be fine,” Mrs Weasley told him, sounding rather tired herself as she turned to her son and daughter-in-law. “Both of you. You have a honeymoon to get to.”

“Mum, don’t be daft. We’re staying here for now,” Bill returned, voice a slightly lower growl than usual – Q briefly remembered that the moon was near full, and couldn’t help but notice the scars across Bill’s face – and Fleur nodded in utter agreement, her beautiful face contorted still. “We’ll go home soon, but we need to stay close.”

Mrs Weasley stifled a sob, and pulled both of them into a hug. Arthur’s face was still set with terrifying anger: “They had no right,” he managed, hand trembling slightly. “They had _no right_.”

“They examined Ron, I presume?”

“Q, dear, you look terrible,” Mrs Weasley said abruptly, still valiantly holding back tears as she released her son and daughter-in-law. “Let me make something for you all, we’ve all had a shock…”

“… Molly…”

Mrs Weasley didn’t listen, just disappeared into the kitchen and began to fry things with something like defiance. Q slid into a chair, absolutely exhausted, aware that he wouldn’t be close to sleeping for a long while yet. “They took Draco,” he murmured, to himself, to Bond.

Everybody looked suitably troubled. Bill and Charlie hesitated a moment before engaging in their own side-conversation, Arthur and Bond glancing at one another somewhat helplessly. “Sorry,” Q murmured. “I just… we let him down, didn’t we?”

Bond squeezed Q’s shoulder slightly; there was nothing to say. “We can always get the git back,” stated up a voice from the door.

Everybody looked up: Ginny stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, looking rather formidable. “He’ll be with the Malfoys. With Voldemort –” everybody winced, “- in direct power, he might even end up back in Hogwarts. There’s got to be something, and we can’t just leave him. Q’s right, we let him down.”

Half of the room were looking at Ginny like they had never seen her before, her father in particular. “Ginny…”

“I know I’m underage,” she said firmly, “but I can do _something_. Harry’s gone now, I should be able to…”

A sharp series of _pops_ from outside. “They’re back,” Arthur noted in disbelief. “Ginny, put your _bloody_ wand away, it won’t help.”

They didn’t knock, just stormed in, an apparent raid. “We’re still not harbouring Harry Potter, before you jinx everything in sight,” Charlie snapped at one of them; he got a sharp jinx in retaliation – Q rolled his eyes slightly at the idiocy, while suppressing the _ferocious_ anger burning under his skin – and they all stomped upstairs.

There was a sudden cry, a series of shouts, male and female voices layering; Ginny was already gone to investigate, tailed by her father and Q a heartbeat later, Q just Disapparating up the stairs to the room Irene and Molly had been sharing.

A jinx soared past him by millimetres; Q snarled, throwing up a Shield Charm on reflex, finding Molly having what amounted to a panic attack while figures slammed into the room, distracted by what was presumably Ginny and the twins, if the voices were anything to go by.

Q threw out nothing but defensive spells, steady and consistent, while he heard Arthur confiscate wands from his various children and shout at them for being stupid enough to engage the raiders in a duel; Q kept concentration, mostly abandoned after a moment. “Molly?”

Molly Hooper watched Q through terrified but steady eyes. “I’m fine,” she said firmly, voice hiccupping a little but mostly intact. “I just wanted to sleep, they scared me… she’s safe, with Mycroft, I couldn’t get to Draco in time… I’m sorry, they got me as I Apparated back in, I didn’t have a chance…”

Quickly, Q hushed her, drawing her into a hug and letting her breathe erratically against him while the Death Eaters decided there was nothing hostile – again – and disappeared once again.

Molly remained in Q’s arms for a while, both somewhat distant.

“I expect they’ll keep doing that,” Bond noted abruptly from the doorway, making them both jump. “How’re you feeling, Mol? Molly downstairs has some food on, if you’re hungry? I could take some up here if you’d prefer.”

Molly shot Bond a grateful sort of look, extricating herself from Q’s embrace. “I’ll come down. Won’t be able to sleep again now anyway,” she mumbled, wincing violently, a small noise caught in her throat as she moved; Q remembered that pain, the ache that seemed to live somewhere inside the sternum and sharply stab if the heart started to beat a little too fast, terror spreading the pain out in icy convulsions from the centre of the chest.

He helped her stand, her hand in his; she was alright, mostly just in shock, breathing out slightly as she was depositing in a chair downstairs. “Irene’s safe?” Bill asked; Molly nodded, Mrs Weasley accosting her with an ungodly amount of bacon. “Good. Remus texted me: they targeted Tonks’s parents but they’re apparently alright, one of us can go out there in a bit once things have calmed down. Mycroft?”

“No word, he’ll have gone underground, I’ll go in the morning,” Q filled in – noting, as he said it, that ‘morning’ was an absolute misnomer. In fact, it was about midday. The sky was clouded over so much that sunlight was barely present, but it was definitely daytime; Q let out a breath, and shook his head slightly. “Make that tonight, actually. Probably best to go at night anyway.”

It was a bizarre environment. Utter suspension. Everybody was frightened or angry or both; the uncertain aftermath of people destroying a life they’d created, quiet wariness, and everybody visibly exhausted. “I’m going to look around outside, clean up a bit,” Bill told them, immediately seconded by Charlie.

“I need sleep before heading,” Q told them, “also Molly – either Molly, for that matter – do you have any of that magic bruise stuff?”

“That was ours,” George chipped in, while Fred accio’d the stuff. It whizzed downstairs, nearly hit George in the side of the head – mercifully not the semi-earless side, which was actually looking very good these days – and they threw it to Q. Bond snagged it out of the air, given that Q had enough time to look vaguely alarmed and recall that he had the hand-eye coordination of a porlock. “You alright, by the way?”

Q raised an eyebrow. “As alright as any of us are in this moment,” he returned drily. “Fleur, Bill – I’m so sorry, and congratulations. It was a beautiful wedding. James and I have a gift for you both in your room. I’m sorry for everything my family have done, to yours, to…”

Fleur rolled her eyes, and batted Q on the head with mocking annoyance. “You arr not zee reezon for zis,” she told him firmly. “Zis is not zee fault of anyone. You, your bruzzers, zey protect us. Silly man.”

Bond barely restrained a snort, while Bill just nodded his wholehearted agreement at his wife’s words. “Just make sure they’re all safe, yeah?” he asked, pushing stray strands of ginger out of his face. “We’ll have a think about what to do about Draco. James?”

“Stay,” Q told him, before his husband could contradict; the Order needed Bond, now, as a stand-in while Mycroft was occupied if nothing else. “I’ll be back in a while. Cheers for this, boys,” he finished, nodding at the Weasley twins who, in spite of everything, still looked refreshingly and wonderfully young.

Q felt old, very old, and more frightened than he entirely wanted to admit to.

Kingsley Apparated in; he looked exhausted, more than Q felt, even. “It’s hell,” he panted, his beautiful voice distorted with a form of quiet pain. “Official story is that Scrimgeour resigned unexpected, Thicknesse has taken over, there’s a ‘reshuffle’ that’s consolidating everything… Are you alright?”

It was funny; a day, a week ago, they would have all had wands out to ascertain that Kingsley was definitely who he claimed to be. Everything had changed so _quickly_ , it seemed somehow impossible. There was no need for Death Eaters to impersonate Kingsley, when they could happily just re-enter the Burrow and jinx any required information out of anybody nearby.

“We’re fine. They used the Cruciatus Curse on Mol...”

“I’m fine,” Molly piped up, through a mouthful of bacon.

“Mycroft, Sherlock, John and Irene got out. We couldn’t get to Draco in time, we don’t really know what happened yet…”

“… I’m going in a couple of hours,” Q supplemented. “I expect I know where they’ll have based.”

“Other than that, Charlie got beaten around a bit…”

“… I’m _fine_ …”

“… and Q was interrogated for about nine solid hours. They didn’t bother with any of the rest of us much, I think they know all of us in the Order have decent enough experience with interrogation resistance. The Ministry are clearly keeping the coup silent, or I expect they’d have just tortured the lot of us…”

Kingsley slumped himself into a chair; Mrs Weasley immediately levitated bacon and eggs his way, which he tried to push away, only to find the cutlery getting a little aggressive in response. He eventually just conceded defeat, beginning to speak while Q let out a small sigh.

“Go to bed, I’ll fill you in,” Bond told him, with a warm concern that made something in Q’s chest relax a little. “Love you.”

Q disappeared as quickly as he could, before more news struck, before something else brought him into conversation, and he fell asleep almost immediately with strangled memories of Draco’s cries and Molly Hooper’s expression, the impossibility of his siblings – Merlin above, Sherlock was using _magic_ \- and the almost-desperate, unsaid prayer that they were actually safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates are gonna be more frequent from hereon in! Hope you guys enjoy. 
> 
> Any and all comments are wonderful and fabulous and I adore you all forever. Jen.


	9. Chapter 9

Ultimately, Q had spent a very long year being frightened for his siblings before. He had spent time being frightened for Bond, being alone, being far _more_ alone than he was now; this, in a slightly perverse way, was a lot easier. Cards were finally on the table, and rather than the throttling mystery, there was fact, and that could be worked through.

It had to be about four in the morning, by Q’s estimations. Bond was lying next to him, eyes open, fixed on the ceiling. “Can’t sleep,” he said, before Q could ask, and immediately rattled off salient facts: Voldemort had staged a very effective coup, Harry Potter had been denounced as the potential murderer of Albus Dumbledore, and the earliest stages of truly repulsive practises were already beginning.

“They’re going to kill the Muggle-borns,” Bond mused. “They’ll send them to Azkaban, and nobody will hear from them again. Nobody’s saying it, we’re all thinking it. In the Department, there were discussions… it wouldn’t be the first time, put it that way. It’s always the Muggle-borns. The US, there was a scandal a few decades back, we’re _still_ trying to clean up that mess… the Muggles, they think can just be easily subjugated. Muggle-borns are _tainted_.”

Bond said it with such viciousness, such palpable hate, that it made Q recoil from him a little; Bond never spoke about his past, and with little fragments of story, Q could understand why. “We won’t let it happen,” he said gently, moving in the mostly-dark to curl his body closer to Bond’s. “That’s why we’re here. The Order. We know Harry is going to fight You-Know-Who, and we’ll do the same, but we’re going to have to be the ones that keep people safe. The Order needs to defend, not fight, at least for now, or a _lot_ of people are going to die.”

For a moment, Bond was entirely silent; he leaned over eventually, pressed a kiss into Q’s hair, breathing him in. “I’m not a good person,” he said, in a voice that made Q stop breathing. “If it came to it, I know where my priorities lie, and it’s not always… please don’t ever think I’m a good person.”

Q didn’t try to contradict it. “I love you,” he said instead, and allowed that to hold all necessary emphasis.

They remained in bed for a little while longer, in silence, Q idly tracing patterns into Bond’s skin while Bond continued to let his mind wander a very long way out of Q’s reach. “So. I should be back by the end of the day,” Q murmured. “I’m not stupid; they’re going to target me, I’ll send word through to you when I’m on my way back. Is there anything Myc needs to know?”

“It’s Mycroft, he probably already knows,” Bond returned, with vague sarcasm. “If he has a safe location… here’s not good enough, we need somewhere more certain.”

“On it,” Q agreed; he smirked as Bond kept a slightly melancholy smile and levitated his socks as he was trying to reach for them. “ _Stop it_.”

Bond stopped; the socks fell out of suspension with sad little thumps. “Cheers for that,” Q muttered disconsolately at his husband, pouting a bit, hating that it was four in the bloody morning and he was going on a random and potentially very fruitless search. “I hate mornings.”

“It’s night time.”

“I hate pedants,” Q told him, pulling his favourite cardigan on over his shirt, yawning as he did so and wondering vaguely if Mrs Weasley had left any food around that he could nab. He kissed Bond briefly. “Be safe, don’t do anything stupid, I’ll be back soon.”

Bond watched him go, still with something lurking in his expression that Q just found a little bit troubling.

It was going to be a hell of a day.

Downstairs, Kingsley and the Weasley twins were engaged in what appeared to be a very serious conversation; the boys probably should have been asleep – Mrs Weasley would have sent them to bed hours previously, Q guessed – but they remained regardless, and Q tried to remember that they were adults. Adult Order members, in fact.

“All okay?” he asked lightly; Kingsley looked up, giving him a still-exhausted smile, nodding. “Good. I’m going to find my brothers, if I can, Mycroft…”

“Tell him the Department of Mysteries has closed down,” Kingsley quickly told him, before Q could finish the sentence. “Several of the doors locked of their own volition. He knows more about it than I do.”

Q nodded; he glanced around, saw some cold toast lying discarded. “Anyone?” he asked lightly, and happily grabbed it when nobody laid claim.

The night was bitterly cold, leaving Q to somewhat wistfully remember the morning of the wedding.

He twisted on the spot, and Disapparated.

-

Q had no intention of going straight for his intended locations. Instead, he headed straight for Baker Street, Apparating into the very centre of a room he had only been in once or twice previously.

There was almost nothing left of Sherlock and John’s legacy. It wasn’t too surprising – the pair had disappeared from it nearly two years previously – but Q would have liked to have some more memory of what had been. Mrs Hudson evidently hadn’t rented it out to anybody in the interim, which Q knew full well was because she still received rent money in the Muggle post intermittently, but she had definitely tidied away most suggestions of the two boys who had once been in 221B.

Q ambled into the kitchen, muttering _muffliato_ under his breath, and thanking Merlin that Bond had ever taught him that particular spell.

In the middle of the kitchen table, there was a piece of paper, with a single letter: _Q_.

Sherlock’s writing, and Q knew immediately: he raised his wand, murmuring _calendo_ , watching the paper heat and the words on it become visible, then intelligible.

For a moment, Q was honestly confused; all he could see was the address of Mycroft’s London flat. He knew where Mycroft lived, he had gone there all his life, so there seemed no reason.

It was obvious, Q realised abruptly: he had placed the flat under a Fidelius charm. Q knew it existed, knew where it was, but would never have been able to find it again unless he was actively told the address. Mycroft had made Q’s childhood home one of the safest places in the world.

Still, there was no chance of Q leaving yet. Death Eaters would still be milling, and they were fairly likely to be watching Baker Street and other ‘important’ Order landmarks, in the hope of finding Harry Potter, and the Holmes brothers. Q was torn between despising his namesake, and feeling ridiculously proud that his siblings could cause such chaos.

Q made tea. He intended to take the tube in an hour or so when they opened, and go to Mycroft’s; the tube would shake off the Death Eaters, if there were any left watching by that stage. Q would have been very surprised if Mycroft had set up base in his flat; it was too small, and too underpowered, to be a decent stronghold.

Then again, the Holmes brothers had near enough sworn off ever returning to the Holmes Manor, so Merlin alone knew where they had ended up. Q would find out.

Early morning tube from Baker Street. A collection of sleep-deprived and slightly jittery human beings in a confined space, intently not looking at one another, most clutching coffee with tangible need and pretending to be immensely interested in the morning paper just in case somebody tried for small talk and they didn’t have an adequate enough excuse to ignore them. Especially when the rush hour hadn’t quite hit, there was always the ominous chance of an addled conversationalist, filling the footstep of space where – in a few hours – at least three people would be contorted.

Bond had, to Q’s great amusement and greater shock, been very conversant with tubes when they travelled into London, on one quieter occasion. Apparently, he had spent enough of his life as an undercover Muggle for tubes to be passé.

Q had rarely loved him more. Bond was one of maybe three wizards Q had ever met who understood turnstiles.

Just in case, Q took an intentionally circuitous route to Mycroft’s – he lived round Chalk Farm, so a swap at King’s Cross should have been ample – and eventually stumbled out, just as the rush hour was really kicking off, and ambled his way to where he had spent most of his childhood.

The flat was deserted. Q couldn’t help the melancholy that crept in around the edges of his thoughts, the same melancholy that hit when he felt how cold the nights were or how dark the skies were now. This was once his home, this entire flat had been Q’s home, and it was surreal – unpleasant – to see it so hollowed out.

Yet, to Q’s interest, it wasn’t inhabited by a Muggle. It wasn’t inhabited at all.

There was little to do but wait. Q’s brothers had guided him here, for whatever reason, and he took it on trust that an explanation would eventually be forthcoming; thus, he made himself more tea, and settled to watch Mycroft’s TV.

World news. Nothing of the Wizarding hell that was erupting, but ample amounts on the increasingly unpleasant events that continued to affect the Muggles just on their doorsteps; the Wizarding world was spilling out, ready to drown those weaker than they, and Q just watched with his brows in a tight knot.

Mycroft arrived exactly an hour later, walking straight through the door as he had every evening when Q had been in primary school; five thirty, practically to the minute, and Q’s grown-up brother would come home and make dinner for Q and Sherlock.

“I always refused to eat Marmite,” Q told Mycroft, as his own bloody wand was raised in his face. “Sherlock loved the stuff, I refused, and you bought me peanut butter which Sherlock caught you eating with a teaspoon once, and he still won’t let you live it down.”

The wand was lowered. “The alerts went off, but I needed to establish that if was not a break-in but somebody with something to wait for,” Mycroft explained simply; Q nodded, and reached out to his brother. “Later, we need to get out. My wand?”

Q tamped down the vague feeling of hurt at the lack of tangible affection – even after all the time he’d known his siblings, it never made their emotional reticence precisely _easier_ \- and handed over Mycroft’s wand, feeling the hum of contentment from both it and his own wand as they were returned to their rightful owners. “Thank you for taking care of him,” Q told Mycroft honestly, nodding at the wand, Mycroft mercifully not questioning that Q had gendered his own wand somewhere along the line.

Mycroft nodded, and indicated the door. “We will be taking this in three separate movements. You need to hold on extremely tightly, and concentrate wholly on me.”

“I know how side-along works,” Q pointed out with a slightly wry smile, and followed Mycroft out.

As soon as they were out of range of the spellwork around Mycroft’s flat, they were moving.

Mycroft had not been kidding about the necessity of holding on, or indeed concentrating; Apparating was a nasty enough business on one journey, and Mycroft had decided to make three in immediate succession. Q was given a half-second glance at places he almost recognised before Mycroft turned again, and he was fairly certain he was going to throw up.

They settled. Q swallowed down vomit with a fair amount of difficulty, and straightened, trying to retain dignity that Mycroft had without any bloody effort.

Fields. Empty fields. _Recognisable_ empty fields.

“Close your eyes,” Mycroft ordered, “and think about the location of your wedding.”

Q couldn’t find the name. It lingered in his head, certainly, and he could _see_ the knowledge but couldn’t access it, and thus he couldn’t see the very large building he knew was directly in front of him. “Can’t you tell me?!” he asked irritably. “You’ve protected it…”

“I’m not the secret-keeper, and have tongue-tied myself from uttering the name in addition,” Mycroft pointed out, with dry patience. “Theoretically, the fact of you having been here, knowing it intimately, with a good deal of positive experience attached should grant you access. In fact, it makes you near enough unique in that regard. Bond is the only other who…”

“Mycroft, we’re out in the open, and I can’t get in – not precisely an ideal circumstance here.”

Mycroft let out a small sigh. “We are in the precisely identical position to the last time you Apparated here, on your wedding day. Visualise it, if you would, a precise emotional memory mimicry should…”

The moment Mycroft said it, Q knew.

Dressed in his wedding robes, terrified beyond measure, Sherlock in the doorway and Remus waiting for him, Bond on the other side out of sight, and _yes_ , he could remember, he could remember everything, his mind finally snatched the memory out of obscurity.

Skyfall Manor stood proudly in front of them, dark and cold and forbidding, and very Scottish. “Here?” Q asked, very softly, as he stepped forward and was inside the gates, lost to those who wished him harm. “Why _here_?”

Mycroft smiled, with something like sadness. “We could have gone to our ancestral home, but it would appear that – in all their wisdom – our parents placed a series of charms to block Sherlock entry. Hence I put in motion plans to make this a safe house if required almost immediately, and it has been prepared for a long while – even when you came here for the Portkey, you would have never been able to get into the building. Only the front drive. Nobody of the Order are currently able to enter, but I feel we may need to amend that a little.”

“Who’s the…”

“The only person no Death Eater would anticipate,” Mycroft explained simply, and waited for Q’s eyes to widen before smiling, nodding.

John Watson. The very first Muggle to be a Secret Keeper. It seemed rather apt, in an odd way.

They stopped outside the front door.

There was no handle.

“That’s new,” Q commented lightly.

Mycroft chuckled, and rang the doorbell.

Five seconds, and it opened to reveal a rather harassed-looking John Watson. He took one look at Q, and immediately hugged the rather surprised man with real force. “You’re alright?” he asked, in a voice of utter formality, the ultimate soldier.

“I’m fine,” Q said quickly. “Let’s just get in, I hate being outside like this.”

“I entirely concur,” Mycroft stated smoothly, and breezed into the hallway. “Just so you are aware, Q – Sherlock is the only person who will ever be able to see the door handle. Just a small magical conceit of my own; enemies in disguise would attempt perhaps to conjure one, but our friends will know the eccentricity and behave accordingly. It is a simple way to distinguish whether or not they are our own.”

Clever. Fallible, but clever.

Q told his sibling as much, as John bellowed for Sherlock, and was met with a nod of agreement: “I was rather hoping I could borrow some of your more recent technical expertise to improve this all; my apologies for not returning the text message, but under the circumstances…”

“I have been working on these things _so they’re used in emergencies_ ,” Q pointed out, rolling his eyes slightly. “I’m guessing you don’t have any actual tech here? I might just sort a smartphone for you Myc, it’s probably simplest given you’ll be on the move and you can get onto the internet. I’m going back to the Burrow tonight, I was just about to do the bloody tutorials on how to use the damn laptop…”

Mycroft was shaking his head, Q trailing off with slight confusion. “Priorities, Q. We need places secure, we can concern ourselves with fripperies later.”

Q raised an eyebrow, opened his mouth to tell Mycroft _precisely_ what he thought of his work being labelled ‘fripperies’ – at which point Sherlock entered, and the ex-detective found himself wrapped in a hug. “I don’t know quite has overcome you and John, the levels of physical intimacy are unprecedented,” Sherlock commented drily, extricating Q from his front. “We are quite alright, and have been receiving contact from other Order members.”

“And it didn’t occur to actually _reply_?!”

“Security,” Mycroft interjected, without apology. “We cannot risk another stronghold folding. I cannot impress upon you the importance. The past day or so has indicated that we cannot guarantee anybody’s safety, but there are some who stand to lose more than others, and I _will not_ allow another situation wherein I am nearly too late.”

Q was quiet for a heartbeat. “What happened?” he asked.

“I Apparated out of the Burrow instantly, when I ascertained that the spells had shattered; John, as Secret-Keeper, was able to access the house instantly – I left him, with the implicit understanding that he would be able to grant Miss Adler access.”

“Irene and Molly got there a few seconds later,” John explained, “and Mol went back for Draco, of course, and I was expecting Mycroft to arrive with Sherlock almost immediately…”

“Quite unfortunately, the Death Eaters had managed to move faster than I anticipated,” Mycroft explained crisply. “They intercepted me upon my arrival back in the Burrow, and wasted no time. As I understand it, Sherlock was hiding…”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “It seemed prudent,” he commented drily. “I assumed that you were imminently arriving, in either case, but my intentions were somewhat spoiled when it became apparent that Molly had also been intercepted by the Death Eaters…”

“Is she alright?”

Q looked into the doorway, seeing a ghost-like Irene Adler staring, watching them. “She’s fine,” Q told her, with gentleness that surprised even himself. “Being looked after as we speak. Draco is back with his family, however, couldn’t get to him in time.”

Mycroft nodded. “So I established,” he stated gravely, while Irene moved closer, standing close to John for some reason. “A true tragedy. We will do what we are able, once I have re-contacted the Order. For now,” he continued, and let out a slight sigh. “We should sit, and Q, I want to know everything.”

An easy enough order; Q followed them into what was presumably supposed to be a living room – currently dilapidated and unpleasantly dark – and sat, Sherlock creating a roaring and rather enthusiastic fire in the grate, immediately breaking into stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as ever, to readers and subscribers and commenters and kudos'ers and bookmarkers, you're all wonderful people and you make ventures like this worthwhile. Jen.


	10. Chapter 10

Q spoke until his voice had half given out. He texted Bond and the rest of the Order to let them know he wasn’t dead, and assured Bond – who was tangibly fretful – that he would be back soon enough.

Mycroft didn’t say a syllable for the duration of Q’s speaking, and Sherlock dropped in nothing more than acerbic reiterations and the occasional disparaging snort. Irene, meanwhile, was listening with apparently rapt attention and pretending not to be texting under the table – Q made a mental note to ask – and John was listening, but mostly engaged over a cauldron.

“My entire supply’s in the Burrow,” John filled in at one stage, noticing Q’s gaze linger curiously on him. “Mycroft filled the entire house up ready with ingredients, so I thought I might as well; the more the better, with some of the healing ones…”

Q couldn’t agree more, but still found it a touch surreal; Sherlock, meanwhile, had stopped watching John with resentment, but instead shifting into something closer to pride. It was clearly quite a comfort, to know that if all else failed, he at least was dating somebody extraordinary.

It hadn’t quite occurred to Sherlock that he was quite extraordinary enough on his own merits, without John really needing to be involved. Between the two, it was just a little frightening.

None of them spoke about Harry Potter. They seemed to all be in unspoken agreement that Harry was doing whatever he was doing, entirely off his own bat, and would have sought help _if_ he wanted it. The Order needed to focus their attentions elsewhere.

“I think we need to start relocating people in here as soon as we can,” Q broached, at one stage. “Mol, for example. Not the Weasleys, they’ve all got lives to maintain, but she’s not with Mungo’s, and we could really do with her and John if we’re all…”

Mycroft was already agreeing: “The next few months will be of paramount importance. We will need to defend before we can attack, firstly, but that will include ensuring that our allies cannot be harmed. I intend to, with your assistance, create a sanctum in the Holmes Manor for those who wish to use it; not Order affiliated, but a place we may be safe to harbour any number of sympathisers or their families.”

Q grinned, and nodded. “I can work with that,” he said quickly; his phone buzzed, and he glanced down at it with a small smirk. “I should be getting back before James’s blood pressure becomes irretrievable,” he mused aloud. “Hopefully it won’t be too unpleasant when I do.”

“The flat will theoretically only allow in yourself, Sherlock and I,” Mycroft told him quietly. “It is our final recourse. Be safe, Q. We will begin opening communications on text imminently. As soon as we are installed fully here, we will implement the move for the Order. Not to mention that surveillance of all major locations should have calmed by then, and we may be able to manage it far more subtly.”

Q gave John a quick hug before departing – Sherlock made another slightly disparaging noise – and Q gave Irene a brief wave and a passable smile. They weren’t at the hugging stage.

Looking at Mycroft and Sherlock’s expressions, Q could also work out quite why Irene orientated herself near John: brotherly protective instincts were still thrumming in the Holmes boys, and they seemed to find it just as hard as Q to entirely forgive the woman, and on top of that were ferociously protective of their youngest sibling. Q suspected there had been, if not hostility, then at least rather blatant mistrust.

Of course, Q also accosted his siblings with brief embraces apiece, before slipping out of the door and trudging up the drive to the gates, where he could instantly Disapparate.

There was no point taking roundabout routes: Q just Apparated straight to the Burrow, and was unsurprised but annoyed all the same when a spell missed him by inches. “ _Do not move_.”

Q twisted around with sarcasm riddling even his slightest movements, expression bored and not bothering to hide the annoyance. “Can I help?”

“The Ministry have reason to believe you have been assisting in harbouring known criminals…”

“ _Criminals_?!” Q repeated, with sheer disbelief. “You’re…”

“ _Q_.”

It was rather lucky that Mrs Weasley had cut him off in time. Q was getting to the stage of tangible anger without any hesitation, which would naturally end exceptionally badly if he was allowed to continue as he was. “Hello,” Q smiled at her. “Sorry, just got back, no luck on the potions.”

“Potions?” the Ministry Death Eater asked sharply.

Q turned to her, eyes blazing but demeanour utterly calm, smile sycophantic and lethal in the extreme. “Indeed,” he murmured. “We have a patient with Spattergrout, and you tortured his doctor. I also have chronic chest pain from extensive previous torture. Will that do? Or do I need to explain that a little more _graphically_?”

The Death Eater looked suitably cowed, to Q’s satisfaction. “On your way. We are watching you, Mr Bond.”

Q restrained the small smile that always threatened itself when somebody called him ‘Mr Bond’, nodded curtly, and turned on his heel to walk into the Burrow.

It only took a moment for Q to be all but swallowed by absolutely everything, everybody, words upon words upon words all asking what in the name of Merlin he had been doing all day and just what Mycroft was doing, and indeed where they were.

“One at a time, and not before somebody’s given me tea,” Q said firmly. “Molly, I don’t suppose you have anything edible anywhere? Completely forgot about food, I’ve been on back-to-back tea.”

Mrs Weasley, of course, wasn’t having any of that. She immediately disappeared into the kitchen – to Q’s immense satisfaction – and started magicking things in and around, the smell of toast starting to roll through the door. “Thank you,” he called through the door.

“ _Don’t worry about it, dear_ ,” came the immediate reply. “ _Start without me, I’ll be two minutes”._

Q let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding, and turned back to those around the table. “We have a potential safe house, safer than here – I couldn’t tell you the name if I tried, I’ve not actually heard it said aloud all day. Not only unspeakable as a secret, but he tongue-tied the name: even among those who know the name, we will not be able to say it. So it’s protected, but needs to be more so before we risk transferring. If we do, we will have a supposedly impregnable base to work from.”

“Superb,” Bill murmured. “And the others?”

“Safe, well and lonely. Who’s been texting Irene?”

Everybody exchanged glances, with quiet and tangible confusion, making it very evident that none of them had been. Q shook his head, waved them off, actually rather aware of who she had probably been texting. “Doesn’t matter. You all need to have those phones on you, and be aware of how to use them – this will be important from now on. They will _not_ interrupt security systems or the like, so just get used to them. The internet will have to wait another day. Fred? George?”

Both of them turned immediately. “Yes?” in perfect unison.

Q shot them a grin. “I’m going to need you both, meant to ask forever ago: I need your contacts, and I want to discuss concepts with you. I can’t do this on my own. Your inventions are brilliant things, we need to put them to good use. Is there anything from Remus?”

“No sign, he’s disappeared,” Charlie told him apologetically. “I think he’s gone off to find Harry, have to say I’m not delighted with him for it.”

“Eet eez bad form,” Fleur supplemented vociferously, helping Mrs Weasley bring food through, supplying Q with his requisite tea and large quantities of other food that she seemed to have practically conjured, in spite of the laws of magic. “Zat Tonks, she needs heem.”

There was an uneasy quiet for a moment while everybody weighed up, and agreed to, the uncomfortable truism in that statement. “They’ll be fine,” Bill said quietly, with a little more optimism than truth, if everybody was being quite honest; Remus had been cagey, even unpleasant, for most of their recent memories.

If he returned – when he returned – he would be dealt with. “Is Mol around anywhere?” Q asked lightly; somebody mentioned that she was upstairs, and Q briefly excused himself, rather interested in testing his newfound theory.

He knocked on Molly’s door, pushed inside when he heard her extend the invitation. “Hello!” she said, with bright surprise, blushing as she rather unsubtly slid her phone out of sight. “Sorry, I was about to come down.”

Q barely restrained his smiling. “Are you the one texting Irene?” he asked gently, smile growing as he watched Molly’s face change, moving into something that was an open story. “It’s not a problem, I was just wondering.”

Molly half-smiled, expression still a touch wild. “She’s my friend, I’ve been looking after her, and she doesn’t have many people looking after her and Sherlock and Mycroft hate her because of you, I mean, not, _because_ of you, but because of what happened, and she’s so sorry about that, I mean, sorry that, I just…”

“Calm,” Q laughed, grinning as Molly tied herself in verbal knots. “Really, I was only asking.”

“You don’t trust her.”

The truth of that statement hammered into Q somewhat unpleasantly; yes. If it had been nearly anybody else, he wouldn’t have worried so much. It probably would have barely registered.

Q watched Molly carefully for a moment, quite sobered. “No, I don’t,” he said honestly. “I don’t think she means harm, but I can’t trust her. Forgive me, Molly, I am trying.”

Molly watched him steadily, nodded in a bitten-off motion. “I know,” she returned lightly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked.”

It was amazing to witness Molly Hooper, from time to time, simply because she had a force behind her that was very easily missed. Could not lie for whizzbees, but there was absolutely nobody better when trapped in a corner, given that she utterly refused – in spite of all her nervous energy – to take anybody’s shit.

Q gave a respectful nod, and went downstairs to find food.

-

“… and that,” Q muttered, letting out a whistle of breath between his teeth, “should be just about done. Could you call Irene and John for me? Need to talk them through how all of this works.”

Mycroft had been watching with an absolutely impassive expression for the past several hours. Sherlock was silent. The fact that Sherlock hadn’t found a single disparaging comment for a decently long was fairly indicative of how impressed he was.

There was nothing in either Muggle or Wizarding worlds that should have been able to find, access, break into, or cause any damage to, Skyfall Manor. Never, in Mycroft’s extensive past and research, had he heard of anything being afforded the forms, quantity, or sheer _innovation_ that Q had just been wantonly using.

“You are wasted on Hogwarts,” Mycroft commented drily, before calling: “Irene? John?”

“Two minutes,” John yelled back from the other room; Q wasn’t too surprised, he could smell something unpleasantly acrid issuing from some unknown portion of the house.

Irene materialised within moments. Actually, she had been ridiculously helpful with everything Q had been doing; she knew the Muggle world, and had been on the edges of Dark magic for long enough to know their routines. She knew how the Death Eaters operated, she knew how Muggles worked, and had no magic of her own to conflate the issue; she could talk through complex security systems in a way that was both mildly alarming and exceptionally useful.

“So, in order: repelling spells around the perimeter. Muggles will stay well back, and we shouldn’t have problems from wandering wizards either. Any noise or activity within the house and surrounding grounds is suitably eliminated, so no issues there. We’re keeping the same established parameters around John being the sole secret-keeper – we have a secondary facet now, in that to enter the ground, one _has_ to go through the gates. The gate itself is a doorway, and so is technically still able to be covered by a secondary Fidelius charm.”

“We have _two_?!” John repeated, blinking stupidly.

Q nodded. “Mycroft’s tongue-tied one is excellent, but John, you can’t leave the house – it’s therefore a bit tricky to be able to get people in. So we can have a less stringently guarded Fidelius Charm on the gate, which grants access to the grounds, but they still won’t see or access the house itself. Meanwhile, John, there is a system of Muggle CCTV – it’s not CCTV, but consider it as such – which will verify the identity of anybody outside once they’re within the grounds. You can then go outside, communicate the name, person enters, all is well.”

“The doorknob?”

“Amended now; you don’t need to have the door answered, but you need to be recognised by the security systems I’ve put in place. Cameras, mostly, and Sherlock needs to essentially log people into the system, I don’t want to recast that spell _but_ , if Sherlock is in charge of that camera network – as in, he’s the one who logs the verified identity – it’ll have the same effect of allowing access to the handle. The computer system works as an extension of him.”

Everybody stood in absurd, disbelieving silence.

Q wondered, for a moment, if he’d done something extremely wrong somehow.

“That’s brilliant,” John said instead, with the customary bluntness he had whenever Sherlock did something exceptional. “ _Brilliant_. Not totally sure I understand it, but yeah. Fantastic.”

Of course, that triggered Q blushing most of the way to his feet, and blustering a little.

Mycroft smiled understatedly. “I believe we should begin moving the Order in, and – if you would – fortify the Holmes household,” he noted, with a tone that was all the congratulations Q could expect from his eldest sibling. “Thank you, Q.”

The last comment made Q blink stupidly for a moment, before he decided it was safest to go back to work, collaring Sherlock and taking him away to set up the CCTV circuits.

-

The move out of the Burrow happened with superb speed and efficiency. Q was the secret-keeper for the gate, which meant he took a person at a time by side-along and let them in through the gate one by one. Sherlock set up the database of faces as different people arrived, allowing the cameras to register and recognise faces – Q had woven in a series of anti-illusion charms along the course of the drive too, which would help – and one by one, the various members of the Order were introduced to Skyfall Manor.

“It had to be here.”

Bond’s voice was neutral in a way Mycroft himself would be proud of; Q slid their hands together, and smiled, as encouragingly as he could manage. “It’s not all bad,” he reminded gently. “Our wedding. Our reception. It’s just a building, all of this is just a space – don’t make it something to resent, or this will just get difficult.”

Q smiled as Bond lifted Q’s fingers to his lips, and pressed a kiss to the knuckles.

Inside, the building was fast-becoming an active centre; Mrs Weasley had unsurprisingly started cooking, John was making pungent and somewhat concerning smoke billow out of another room, Sherlock was casting spells on repeat in his own room, Mycroft laying out plans and blueprints and concepts across a table and Q just watched with neutral curiosity.

Mrs Weasley returned to the Burrow intermittently, mostly to check if anybody had arrived; Tonks and Remus, for example, had no idea the Order were relocating in the first place, let alone where to. The pair of them were currently unsure of whether to stay with Tonks’s parents, find their own place, or just give up and live with the Order; Q was quite content to wait. Mostly, he was just glad for Tonks’s sake that Remus had deigned to return to his pregnant wife after several days of absence.

Whisp _adored_ Skyfall. Unlike the Burrow, which was a little small and had led to her getting repeatedly underfoot, Skyfall allowed her to roam freely and feel a little more at home. She missed Tonks horribly, and so remained a sludge-coloured grey for a good few days in petulant revenge.

Q settled with surprising speed. It wasn’t as good as the Burrow, no, but it was still a home. He had a bedroom, a cat, a husband, and the people he cared about were just about safe; it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

The Holmes once-home was dealt with very quickly. Q hated being in there; there were pictures of his parents, of his siblings at very young ages, and there was a resentment that lived under Q’s skin that came alive when he was in the Holmes household. Honestly, Q just stayed long enough to apply some of his security measures, attempt and fail to remove the spells that would curse Sherlock if he came within a hundred feet, and made Mycroft the Secret-Keeper.

It was usable, and Q hoped to heaven he never had to go back. “It’s just a place,” Bond reminded him at one stage, with a wicked smirk, laughing when Q whacked him for being a cheeky arse.

Thus began one of the more dangerous initiatives the Order had ever endeavoured: extracting Muggle-borns, their families, newly discovered Magical children, and doing all they could to give them refuge.

“Got another one,” Kingsley told them, in his deep, calming voice: he was the best by a long margin, when trying to deal with the Muggle-borns. He knew how to come across as trustworthy and not completely unbalanced, partly because he had mastered the knack of dressing like a Muggle.

It was an unbelievably complex, and risky, procedure. Muggle-borns were refusing to trust many people, unsurprisingly, and many placed their dependence in the hands of the Ministry given that they couldn’t work out who to be the most frightened of. It meant scanning through people’s post, infiltrating the Ministry units that could sense latent Magical ability, and trying to get them to safety.

Many Muggle-born children were just confused. They had been introduced to a new world, only to find that they could be killed or imprisoned for something they literally didn’t understand. Leaving their families, their homes, to be taken somewhere else by people they didn’t know.

To put it mildly, it was a hard sell. Not to mention that the existing spells to detect underage wizardry, and magic in the presence of Muggles, were still going strong; everything had to be conducted with subtlety and subversion, which _really_ didn’t help.

Everybody raised glasses and mugs and everything else they were holding to Kingsley in a respectful salute. “Who?” Mycroft asked, voice low and careful; he had been distributing names to Order members, working out who and how they could make the system operational.

“Abigail Western,” he replied, the two older men exchanging weighted glances, heavy with the understanding of too long fighting the same evils. “She’s safe and installed, and I’ve Obliviated the parents.”

Q sighed a little at the last statement; it was his least favourite aspect of Mycroft’s elaborate planning. He couldn’t quite imagine living a life, only to find time missing, time which had once held his own child; it was something of a horrifying concept.

Bond squeezed his hands, and gave him a small smile, sad but understanding. Encouraging, even.

For the greater good.


	11. Chapter 11

By the end of August, there were seven people living on the Holmes estate, not including Order members who were staying to be helpful. Molly Hooper moved rather early on – Mycroft had never made a secret of the fact that he wanted the East Wing to become a pseudo-hospital for Order members and affiliates – taking Irene with her.

Remus and Tonks also decided to move themselves in there, as more experienced protectors. Tonks was showing now, the small bump of her baby just starting to show around the edges in a way that way making most Order members quietly broody.

In any case, the Holmes estate was growing more prolific and more important. The Daily Prophet was posting out lists of Muggle-borns who had not presented for inspection, and there were a _lot_.

It made sense: anybody with intelligence or indeed perspective had quickly clocked that being Muggle-born was incredibly dangerous now. Many had disappeared without a trace, all of the ones without families, those without ties back to the UK.

Those who had arrived for inspection had been shipped off in mass convoys to Azkaban. There had been no word from them since.

Now, it was a race to find those still in hiding before the Ministry did, and get them to safety. Border controls had been implemented; nobody could fly in or out, the Floo Network was closed at the Channel, and Apparating across countries was a very dangerous procedure that few had the capacity for in the first place. Muggle means of travel were equally being monitored, and news was travelling of many trying to flee and being intercepted.

Thus, safety had to be found on home soil. There were limited options.

“What’s that?” Q asked on a fairly average evening, nodding at the papers sprawled over the kitchen table; Mycroft, Bond, Kingsley and Remus were perusing them with intense interest, brows knotted with worry and necessity.

Kingsley glanced up; he looked exhausted these days, hadn’t lost the peaked look he had gained on the wedding night. “Access to Azkaban,” he told Q, voice still so perfectly calm. “We need to find out what it’s being used for, now. Charlie was speaking to some contacts in Romania – it seems nearly impossible to get near Azkaban these days.”

“What about other countries? Surely there’s international interest?”

“Without proof, they’re refusing to intervene,” Mycroft told him dispassionately. “Flagrant breaches of human rights on the part of the Ministry, but without a figurehead or indeed _proof_ , they will not become involved. Not to mention that they are naturally afraid of a wider conflict all are currently unprepared for. If we could uncover treatment of Muggle-borns to international press, we would be in a better position.”

“As it is,” Bond supplemented, his body shot through with tension Q could recognise too easily, “it would seem that international governments are more interested in getting the new data on Muggle-borns, the theory of magic-stealing. The US Ministry, they’ve been split for years, opposing figures in their organisation have got the documents…”

“… and are using it for their own agendas,” Q completed, with a sick sense of inevitability. “They’re essentially condoning it.”

Bond glanced up, very briefly, his blue eyes burning, echoes of everything he had seen a lifetime ago flickering across his gaze, across Q.

He looked back down, and Q moved in, looking over plans he didn’t understand as well he would have liked. He said nothing at all, learning as he went along, realising that Azkaban should probably have been shut down decades ago given the depravity of it as an institution.

The heart of the Order became Skyfall. Mycroft could stage-manage half the world from there, with Bond sliding in as an impromptu second-in-command. Mycroft rarely left Skyfall – he had forever despised legwork – but now had a number of very practised men and women at his disposal.

Bill and Fleur moved into their own house, a gorgeous little place called Shell Cottage. Bond and Q briefly discussed doing the same, in the middle of the night, Q wrapped in Bond’s arms and both staring into the blackness of a room Bond had once grown up in. “I don’t think I can leave my brothers,” Q murmured.

“The Order needs people on site,” Bond continued, agreeing, and kissed the top of Q’s head; Q let out a small sigh. He wanted his own space. He wanted to _live_ , with Bond, doing their jobs and having their lives and not having a strange impromptu house share with his ridiculous siblings and the Weasley family.

Q loved them dearly, but Merlin above, he needed a _life_.

Bond kissed his forehead, with impeccable aim given the darkness, and promised Q in a voice so impossibly soothing: “We will have our time.”

The news about Severus Snape becoming Headmaster came through far earlier than the Prophet announcement.

Minerva – who had been granted access to Skyfall comparatively late, and barely visited given her other engagements in Hogwarts – told them, on a black evening with rain falling from the sky in ugly splatters.

Minerva’s lips were non-existent. “A role model,” she said, with tangible hatred riddling her tone. “Attendance is compulsory, Q and I will be having assessments – Mycroft, they’re assuming you’re remaining on the staff for some reason…”

Mycroft actually managed a derisive snort, which was probably the most uncouth thing Q had ever seen from him, and perfectly summed up the matter. “… obviously not. Q is naturally also not returning to Hogwarts, on the same basis as myself.”

“I do have an opinion,” Q interjected drily. “And as it happens, of course I’m going back. There was never a question of that.”

Sherlock, Mycroft, John and Bond all looked at him with tangible disbelief. “Q, it’s being run by a man who _tried to curse you_ at the end of last year,” Minerva reminded, “who murdered his predecessor, and is running a school with the _Carrows_ in academic capacities.”

In an instant, Mycroft went slightly white. “Excuse me?”

“It gets better,” Minerva continued, her voice rising slightly with anger that could only be described as hysterical. “Alecto as Muggle Studies, Amycus as History of Magic, and _James Moriarty_ as Defence Against the Dark Arts. They’re letting all of them near _children_. I’ve written to the Ministry, I’m trying to make Severus see reason…”

“You’re not going back,” Mycroft told Q tightly, as Minerva continued to explain.

Q felt himself grow cold, felt fear trickle up his spine unpleasantly, the promise of the dark-eyed man with the frightening laugh. Hogwarts, riddled with Death Eaters and Dark Magic, the world he had known and loved completely destroyed.

Which was, of course, why he was absolutely adamant that he needed to return. “You will not dictate this to me, I’m an adult,” he stated, without hesitation.

“You’re twenty-two years old, hardly at the peak of experience,” Sherlock interjected unpleasantly. “Not to mention you’re not a trained…”

“I’m a _teacher_ , and I know enough, it’s not like I’ve been sitting on my arse the last two years, I can look after myself – I’ve fought in the battles too, in Hogwarts, and I’m going to keep on doing so!”

“You were tortured to the extent that you had severe spasms for a year or so, and _still_ are suffering the effects of…”

“… and rather that than a teenager at the hands of somebody like the Carrows,” Q snapped back, unable to quite believe that all of the people he loved most were being quite so absurd. “You knew I was going back, none of this is exactly _news_ , it was always going to be changed around policy-wise…”

“… not to this degree, we never imagined _Snape_ …”

“… Hogwarts is not safe for you, your siblings…”

“… _nor is it for anybody else_ …”

Then, out of nowhere, with a gravity Q hadn’t known his flighty and irresponsible brother capable of: “You will go nowhere near James Moriarty, and I will do whatever I must to ensure that.”

Everybody in the vicinity instantly fell silent. Sherlock did not speak about James Moriarty, about a world where they had known one another and worked against one another. Where Moriarty had been obsessed with Sherlock, as a person, as a _concept_ , and laid traps, played games, darted in and out of Muggle and Wizarding worlds to play with a man he didn’t understand.

Sherlock had seen Moriarty kill. The man knew Muggle explosives and Wizarding cruelties, and spent lifetimes constructing ways and means to gain power and keep power. “By now, everybody knows your identity,” Sherlock continued, voice low and dangerous. “He will be interested, and we don’t precisely want another Silva on our hands now, do we?”

As ever, Q couldn’t quite suppress a vague shiver at the mention, but worked his way through it regardless: “Minerva – you and the staff, Filius, Aurora, none of you would let harm come to me. This isn’t like Silva, this isn’t something I’m prepared to ignore or minimise. I belong in Hogwarts.”

“You’ve been of tremendous help here…”

“Don’t _patronise me_. I’m very good at what I do, yes, but I’m of limited bloody use, and I can do what I’ve always done and keep working within Hogwarts. Merlin above, I could rig half of Hogwarts with surveillance equipment if we wanted, it would be damn good to have an eye on what’s going on. The phones mean I’ll be in contact… you know, _sod this_. I’m not going to be treated like a child. I know you’re worried…”

“You’re our _brother_ ,” Sherlock told him, half-shouting, while John kept a wary eye on his partner, eyeing Q with visible unhappiness.

Bond had gone a little bit quiet. “Q, could I have a word?”

Q let out a small sigh, steeling himself: “No, you may not,” he replied, very simply. “I know what you all have to say.”

Opposite, even Mycroft had run out of steam; he let out a breath through his nose, rolling his eyes skywards, lamenting the idiocy of his youngest sibling and tangibly with no intention of allowing Q to go anywhere near Hogwarts. “We can discuss this at another stage,” he stated levelly, while Sherlock fumed and Bond’s jaw tightened. “For now: Minerva, what else do we know?”

-

August was wearing on day by day with some of the worst weather for a UK summertime in recent history; the Muggles just believed it extremely unfortunate, and the Wizarding world were fully aware that Dementors were about and that Dark Magic was clouding the skies beyond all recognition.

Work continued for everybody with formal occupations, Q obstreperously continuing to sketch out teaching plans.

The Ministry had become extremely unpleasant, extremely quickly, and everybody knew it. Arthur and Kingsley still worked there; both were fairly frequent visitors to Skyfall, and brought news of emblazoned _magic is might_ banners and statues of Muggles being subjugated, a world turned on its head.

The Weasleys were annoyed, but had decided to remain in the Burrow rather than move into Skyfall, at least for the time being. The ghoul was still impersonating Ron, and Mr Weasley – while working at the Ministry – was likely to be monitored closely, as a close associate of Harry Potter.

Thing was, Arthur was not tremendously subtle. Kingsley was still masquerading as a neutral party – nobody quite knew how any more, it was quite an impressive achievement – but Arthur seemed to have no compunctions about telling people precisely what he thought.

The denunciation of Dirk Cresswell, and his consequent incarceration in Azkaban, seemed the final straw. Q had come to visit the Weasley family for a little while, catch up on what the twins and Bill were doing – Bill was having difficulty with Gringotts, now the goblins were beginning to get angry and the Death Eaters wanted money as much as power – when Arthur had slammed in.

“… brilliant man, brilliant wizard, and if I find out who in the blazes was responsible for this… not to mention no sign of Snape, everybody’s talking about it and no sign of the man, but then I suppose he’s Voldemort’s man now…”

The raids were getting worse, more random. Unexpected, and – without exception – violent. “Look what we have,” a voice crowed, from outside the Burrow, halfway through Arthur’s sentence.

All protective charms seemed to snap in an instant, the moment a raid happened. Even in Skyfall, the spells seemed to be weakening around the perimeter; Death Eaters had been spotted waiting, stalking empty fields in some desperate hope of tracking down the building itself, and Q was worried. They should have been repelled from the off, and while there were any number of reasons why they would keep on looking, it didn’t make Q any happier.

For some reason, the Burrow couldn’t seem to go two days without another raid.

 _This time_ , they found out why. “Takes a brave one to use the Dark Lord’s name like that, eh?” one of them mocked, while Mrs Weasley orientated herself around Ginny, the twins responding like angered wild cats, spines arching lividly as their family came under threat. “Not many people, and you still do it, eh? Only people like _Harry Potter_ use that sort of language, and you don’t wanna be thought of as one of _them lot_ , eh?”

Arthur very nearly didn’t hold his tongue. Q held it for him: “It was a mistake done in anger,” he said calmly, cutting over what could have been a livid tirade from Arthur. “As it is, are we to understand that it is now an offence to say the Dark Lord’s name?”

“Nobody speaks it for a reason,” the Death Eater stated, voice an ominous growl. “Be aware, won’t you? Q.”

There was something in the tone of voice, something unpleasant in the use of his name, that rankled. “Is that a warning?” Q asked dangerously.

The Death Eater raised an eyebrow, and moved away, Disapparating a moment later to leave a rather shellshocked collection in the Burrow.

“… and _that_ ,” Charlie Weasley noted drily, “is why nobody thinks you should go back to Hogwarts.”

“And Ginny?” Q parried, almost instantly. “Being a Weasley is tantamount to immediate suicide, in the current climate, so don’t be a damned hypocrite. She will need somebody onside too, Minerva and the others are too closely affiliated with Hogwarts to focus their attentions with the Order. I’m the perfect balance of both, _and you know it_.”

It was getting increasingly difficult to put up with them all; Bond was being quietly condemnatory and borderline possessive, Mycroft simply refused to entertain the notion that Q would go, and Sherlock was outright insulting.

“So they’ve jinxed You-Know-Who’s name?” Q said after a moment, breaking the awkward silence that had followed his outburst. “I haven’t ever heard of…”

“Taboo,” Charlie explained, with a slight edge to his voice. “It used to be practised in tribal magic, it’s where voodoo dolls and things come from; spells that would sanctify or curse a particular name or person within a community. It’s hard magic, though.”

Q shrugged spasmodically. “It’s a way of making people more afraid,” Arthur said from behind them, his voice closed-off and sharp. “ _Bastards_.”

None of the Weasleys had heard Arthur swear in their lives; Ginny’s eyes widened a little – although a silent party, she had developed an incredible habit of simply being _present_ through most important Order events, and even her mother had given up on trying to stop her – and the twins didn’t bother concealing their small smiles.

It broke the ice, a very little. “We need to get word out,” Molly Weasley noted, as she handed her husband his somewhat belated dinner. “Before anybody else gets hurt. Q?”

“I’m going home now, James and my brothers don’t really say the name anyway but it’s good to know,” Q agreed. It was always odd – especially with Mycroft as he was – but they had always maintained a healthy respect, in their family, for names. Perhaps through Q and his deliberate divorce from his name, perhaps simply after a lifetime of being haunted by and through names, they had never seen the need to address You-Know-Who as his actual name.

Bond, meanwhile, was just of an old guard who had been too hurt too often, who had lived in a terror-ridden world when You-Know-Who had last been dominant, and had never quite been able to bring himself to give the man a name. It made him more human, to have a name, and Bond had no interest in humanising somebody who existed through fear.

Mycroft seemed entirely unsurprised by the news. “It would be his style,” he noted, with a weariness Q recognised: Mycroft was getting overworked. “Important to note, however. Q, are you able to amend any of our protective barriers in the light of this?”

“Interestingly,” Q mused, “They’ve been holding, but I expect it’s why we’ve had Death Eaters in the general area.”

“Recast all repellent spells, and we will keep the house free of the name,” Mycroft confirmed, and returned his attention to other important matters.

Mycroft looked up in vague confusion when a cake and cup of tea appeared in front of him.

John just shrugged slightly. “You need it, and Sherlock’s too proud to admit he’s worried about you,” he explained. “Get some sleep, Mycroft.”

“Seconded,” Q chirped up, earning him a truly filthy look from his eldest sibling. “Myc, you know what you’re like when you don’t sleep. Please? For me?”

Mycroft looked between John and Q, and seemed to appreciate that he was probably being outnumbered. “Ten minutes,” he said firmly, and pulled the cake a little closer; both Q and John watched, sans commentary and trying not make eye contact to avoid mass giggling, as Mycroft tried very hard to curb his visible enthusiasm and ate his cake with as much poise as humanly possible.

Finally, he disappeared to bed, leaving Q and John behind.

“John,” Q asked, waiting until he had John’s full attention before continuing. “I need your help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments sustain me. Thank you, as always, for reading. Jen.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold onto your wands, boys and girls. Jen.

September the second; term was due to start the next day, and Q was deep in conference with an unhappy-looking John Watson when his phone rang.

“ _Get to the Holmes Manor right now_!”

Q didn’t even try to question; something had happened, clearly something monumental, and there simply wasn’t time to ask. He – immediately acquiring Mycroft en route – dove out of Skyfall, and instantly Disapparated, leaving a rather alarmed John and Sherlock behind.

It was still incomparably weird, to go home. Q had been a child, here. Albeit only for a short while, but this was his _family_ home, this was where he had seen his mother cry over Sherlock and listened to both parents denounce the decision, where his father had made cakes with colour-changing sparkles that turned Q’s tongue multicolour, where he had a small child’s memory of yummy food and soft hugs.

All of that had to go quite quickly on hold, given that there were at least six strangers outside the Manor, all looking very frightened, with Bond and Kingsley filtering them into the house. “What the _hell_ …”

“Get them inside, I’m staying on guard for a while,” Bond told him roughly, Q immediately replacing him to get whoever these people were to safety; he assumed Muggle-borns, based on the palpable level of fear and lack of wands on some people’s parts.

Kingsley Disapparated, and Reapparated again almost instantly. “Mycroft, the Ministry main entrance,” he said sharply; Mycroft turned on the spot without hesitation, while Q was joined by Molly Hooper and Remus.

“I have no idea, get them inside,” Q snapped; they did as they were told, before Remus was summoned by Bond to help protect the perimeter, shortly followed Tonks.

They were through the protective filters fairly quickly. Mycroft returned within seconds with another person, and as Secret-Keeper, he made the process a fair deal faster; Q and Tonks were working with their mobile phones, with a stored message Mycroft texted out to them bearing the address. Showing it to everybody, and ensuring they understood, was a slightly longer process.

Mycroft simply stood, announced the name, and everybody piled in. “That,” Q muttered, “would have made life a _lot_ easier.”

“ _Your_ systems,” Mycroft pointed out, in a way that would have been cutting at the best of times; while frayed around the edges, the tone came out as frankly vitriolic.

Q let it lie, as Mycroft strode into the house, an instant before Kingsley reappeared. “Where’s Bond?”

“Guarding the perimeter with Tonks and Remus, Mycroft’s inside – what in Merlin’s name is going on?!”

“Harry Potter was in the Ministry, freed a collection of Muggle-borns that were being assessed,” Kingsley explained, glancing around for signs of Bond or the others. “They had to run – Hermione and Ron were with him, I had only just entered the foyer when everything turned to hell – and they left the Muggle-borns behind. Dementors everywhere, I think Yaxley and a couple of Voldemort’s other…”

The moment he said the name, Kingsley turned on the spot and Disapparated, not staying long enough to even curse his own stupidity. Q simply darted into the house without hesitation, waiting with absolute _terror_ for a potential onslaught of Death Eaters that never appeared.

Q practically crashed headlong into Mycroft. “Kingsley broke the Taboo,” he said simply, and watched Mycroft’s face pale slightly.

Molly and Mycroft had wands out and ready, glancing around at potential entrances tensely. The Muggle-borns with wands and wherewithal were similarly prepared, a host of angry and frightened people. “Who of you have families that need attending to?”

“My babies,” one woman was sobbing, clinging onto a very confused-looking man who was trying desperately to calm her down, “M-Maisie, and…”

“Reginald, isn’t it?” Mycroft asked, voice low and steady, tense but emanating control. “Catterpole. Your address?”

Reg had to give it, as his poor wife was in absolute hysterics; Q texted it to Bond, at Mycroft’s command, and waited while Mycroft addressed them all: “This is a safe house for those currently being threatened by the Ministry of Magic,” he stated, almost alarming in simplicity. “It is not safe for Muggle-borns in the Wizarding world. We are merely offering safety. I cannot promise much more than that.”

“Are you them bird lot?”

Possibly Q’s favourite way of the Order of the Phoenix being described in all the time he’d known about the group.

Mycroft looked wearily aggrieved for a long moment, before sighing: “In a manner of speaking, but this is an independent area. We are working to make it fully sustainable for any number of Muggle-borns or otherwise who wish to find shelter.”

Abruptly, Bond burst through the door, a small child balanced on his hip and two others running straight forward to bowl over the Catterpole parents; Q had a brief imagining of Bond, in several years’ time, similarly bedecked with small children.

They couldn’t wait to consider the matter in full. Molly and Irene immediately peeled off to handle the newcomers and get them settled, Mycroft and Bond turning to one another and trying to work out where they went next: “Kingsley broke the Taboo, we’ve lost him.”

Bond cursed under his breath, nodding. “Fine. Any news on Potter now?”

Q’s phone buzzed, and he spent a moment awkwardly extracting it to finally press against his ear. “Hello?”

“Grimmauld Place, _now_.”

Charlie hung up without a further word. “James, Mycroft, we need to go,” Q said quickly; Bond’s expression clouded, Mycroft still looking concentrated yet distant. “Grimmauld Place, apparently. Mol, are you alright here?”

“Go,” she called back, while trying to handle the Muggle-borns who were panicking and beginning to grow actively angry.

Bond raised an eyebrow at Q, as the three headed outside: “You’re not coming with us,” he said, with quiet shock.

“Sod off,” Q returned succinctly, and turned on the spot.

It was absolute, unmitigated chaos. Grimmauld Place should have been protected, but it was transparently obvious that Death Eaters could get in – and that was the least of the problems facing the handful of Order members congregated around.

The Death Eaters, in a frustrated collective, had decided to abandon the Statute of Secrecy entirely in their desperation to find Harry Potter; jets of coloured light were flying, and there were Muggles openly panicking, screaming. Q had never seen anything like it in his entire life; the Death Eaters had cordoned off the street with a series of Muggle repellent jinxes, and now half were fighting and half hiding as best they could.

One woman was hit with a stinging jinx, and let out an abrupt cry; her husband tried to throw a punch at one of the hooded figures, and a jet of green light hit him in the centre of the chest.

It occurred to Q, briefly, that he wouldn’t have understood what was going on. That Q had just seen a man die for no reason other than simple collateral damage, and he was not the first; Q could see three bodies in the middle of the street, with no way of knowing whether or not they were alive.

“Q, get them out, Obliterate them,” Mycroft ordered sharply, before pointing his wand at Q’s face: “ _Obscurus._ ”

In an instant, Q’s face felt unbelievably constricted, before he realised: Mycroft had conjured him a mask.

Others were arriving, Order and Death Eaters alike; the bottleneck of Grimmauld Place itself was just causing havoc, Muggles hiding in their houses, their windows being shattered, and Q knew this would be a clean-up like nothing they would be able to believe. As it was, he found the woman who had been hit by a Stinging Hex, apologised under his breath as he Stunned her, Disapparated her out of the street to the first hospital that came to mind, and Obliviated her.

On his return, Bond nearly jinxed him, Q avoiding it by a heartbeat.

The battle had degenerated to simply Death Eaters against Order, and everybody knew it. The Death Eaters were all masked; perhaps wary hallucination, perhaps any number of things, but Q could half-see an abrupt swirl of dark hair and a laugh that was on the edges of cruelty, and Vesper’s name hung on his tongue. Remus and Tonks had appeared – most of the Order were there, in fact – and several were in masks, barring those who there was no point in masking.

Q couldn’t quite believe that his world had turned to this; curses gliding inches from his body, from others, and he tried to keep himself safe and gave up on Apparating in and out. Instead, he quickly knocked out all passers-by and began Obliviating, realising quickly that he wasn’t an adept enough Obliviator to manage it properly.

Grimmauld Place itself was on fire.

Then, of course, the Ministry finally deigned to turn up; hoards of Obliviators descending on the place with worrying speed, and with greater numbers than the Order could hope to counter.

They Disapparated, near enough en masse, and all into different places as instinct won out over any form of coherency.

Q found himself in Mycroft’s flat. _Safe, home soon_ he texted to Bond immediately, and slumped down into Mycroft’s old armchair. There was no point in going to the Holmes Manor, definitely not Skyfall, not until the coast was entirely clear; if any of them were being efficiently tracked, it was best that they went to disparate locations.

_Wait half an hour_

Q nodded absentmindedly at the phone, and realised his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Muggles had died, were being killed without apology, in a world where the news would simply ignore it and the Order would be arrested and potentially tortured if they tried to do anything to prevent it.

All of a sudden, it seemed a lot more serious. Like losing Mad-Eye Moody, the day had impacted with the understanding that his life had changed beyond all recognition, and there was _nothing_ he could do but watch things fall apart and patch up what he could.

After about fifteen minutes, it also belated occurred to Q that he was still wearing a mask; he probed the edges of it, peeling it away from his face to glance over the curious construction. Light and somehow feathery to look at, none of the angularity Q had expected.

It was quite beautiful, actually.

Q was still shaking when the half hour was up, and he Apparated back into Skyfall. “Q, Merlin, what happened to you?!”

“Saw the Obliviators and ran,” Q returned quickly, glancing around the assembled Order members; Sherlock and Mycroft were wearing identical expressions and drinking identical teas, Bond drained a coffee with alarming speed, Q was handed an Earl Grey by John with an accompanying knowing expression that mercifully nobody else saw. “Where’s everybody else?”

“Kingsley’s with Bill and Fleur, their place is still secure – he had to fight his way out of hoards of Death Eaters, very lucky to be alive by all accounts,” Mycroft explained, his voice scarily calm. “To the best of our awareness, all of ours are safe and well. Four Muggle deaths, another two in hospital.”

“Fuck,” Q murmured, almost under his breath. “Do we know why?”

Charlie filled in at that stage; Q hadn’t noticed him, jumped rather abruptly. “It seems that the Death Eaters breached Grimmauld Place, the Fidelius Charm must have snapped completely for some reason – Remus said Harry was there, and when I heard they were leaving the Ministry…”

“… you followed,” Q completed, finally understanding. “Grimmauld Place was on fire…?”

“Burned down, now,” Bond filled in, shaking his head languidly. “The Obliviators must have had a time dealing with it, the Muggles can’t even see the bloody thing and half their walls were singed…”

“Not our concern,” Mycroft completed, standing heavily. “Far more important is maintaining the Holmes estate, now we have quite a large number of occupants. That, however, will need to be dealt with in the morning – we are resorting to Muggle shops, all of which will be closed by this time on a Sunday afternoon. As I understand it, the situation is under control at present. I intend to get some rest, I would advise that you all do.”

Q moved over, intending to occupy Mycroft’s newly-vacant seat; he was intercepted, pulled into a brief hug. “Blimey Myc, what’s got into you?” Q said with a small laugh, although not quite pulling away.

“I’m allowed to show my youngest brother affection,” Mycroft returned easily, “especially when said brother insists on persistently involving himself in dangerous situations.”

For a moment, Q couldn’t breathe.

Mycroft let go of him, and strode out towards his bedroom without a further word. Q watched him go with quiet disbelief, twisting back to find Sherlock watching him with eyes faintly narrowed.

Charlie followed a moment after, Bond standing to go after him. “Sorry, need to speak to him quickly – coming to bed?”

“Not yet,” Q returned with a smile, reaching out to Bond, letting his husband’s arms curl around him. “I’ll be up later.”

Bond nodded, pulled away; Q held onto him a half-second longer, inspiring a small chuckle from Bond and a playful expression as he extricated himself from his husband’s grip. “Love you,” Q told him briefly; Bond grinned back, and kissed him gently.

There was only Q and John left. “Are you sure about this?” John asked, without judgement, as Q watched the now empty doorway, let out a breath, finally turned back to John and nodded. “Alright. Everything’s ready when you are.”

“Bag?”

John held out a rucksack, one Q still had from when he had been a lot younger. He had cast an Extension Charm on it the moment he knew how, and it had remained his favourite bag – patched up intermittently – ever since. “Cheers,” Q murmured. “And James…?”

“The calming draft should be hitting any moment now, I dosed him and Mycroft’s tea when they got back,” John told him, his voice too-carefully neutral. “I guessed you’d take this opportunity. The timing could be better.”

Q shook his head slightly, hating himself a little for what he was about to do. “John,” he murmured, “do you think I’m making the right call?”

“No,” he returned honestly.

There was little to be said to that. Q handed John two letters he had awkwardly stuffed into his jeans pocket, and nodded to himself, John still watching him with vague disbelief as Q hitched his bag onto his back and slipped out back entrance.

John would go and distract Mycroft and James for a little while. The Calming Draft was just to make sure neither of them did anything stupid when they found out.

Q went to the edges of Skyfall, stole a final glance, and Disapparated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all are enjoying - please let me know any/all thoughts, if you have the time or indeed inclination!! Jen.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in updating; real life abruptly popped up and went NOPE, NO FREE TIME FOR YOU! Thank you for your patience. Jen.

Hogwarts was not as Q wanted to remember it.

Briefly, Q remembered the stories that had circulated when Dementors were guarding Hogwarts; the kind of aura they were supposed to cast, the stories from those who had experienced first-hand the tangible fear, the permeating despair that could sink into bones and cast up every pain imaginable.

Before that moment, Q had never encountered a Dementor except in books. He had honestly believed that the effects had to be exaggerated. Nothing – in Q’s mind – could possibly have that kind of effect.

As Sherlock’s drug-ravaged teenage body, the sole occasion Q had seen Mycroft cry, the loneliness of losing Bond, the loneliness of his childhood, the loneliness of all of it and the threat of a voice and a smile and silver laugh, all swam in front of his eyes with undeniable clarity, Q understood. He understood everything.

“Expecto patronum,” he said quickly, a wisp of smoke issuing from his wand, nothing more. A Dementor was coming closer, and Q felt his breath coming too-quickly, panicking, drawing up his wedding from the sides of his memory: “ _Expecto patronum_.”

His swan burst out, running down the approaching Dementor, giving Q opportunity to quickly move in, sidestepping and getting onto the darkened grounds. It was ridiculously dark for the time of day, and it somehow didn’t surprise him to see it.

The Great Hall was equally dingy. Q glanced up at it, letting out a small sigh. His home was falling away from him, from everybody.

“ _Q_?!”

Minerva; Q twisted, greeting her with a smile she seemed unable to reciprocate. “What in Merlin’s name are you doing here?!” she said, voice low, half-whispering. “You were supposed to be remaining elsewhere. You’re not planning to stay and teach?”

Q raised an eyebrow. “You knew from the outset that I’d always be coming back,” he returned fluidly, a little perturbed by what could only be described as panic. “In the light of current events, particularly.”

“You have to go. Now,” she told him urgently.

In his pocket, Q’s phone vibrated, almost imperceptibly; Bond had evidently found out that Q was gone. Q didn’t dare look at it, not when walls had eyes and ears, not when they could be found: the phone was his lifeline, his tenuous connection to the outside world. To James. “I need to go, I have to dissuade certain parties from following me out here.”

“Q, you _do not understand_.”

Q whipped around, now finally angry, the dim candles around the Hall reflecting in his glasses. “Minerva. I am an adult. I am fully capable of making my own decisions, particularly insofar as my _job_ is concerned. I…”

“Buenos dias.”

The world stopped. Thought, action, motion, all stopped in a single heartbeat.

Minerva was warily still. Q appeared to have lost all control of his limbs.

It had never occurred to him that Silva would return to Hogwarts. Silva was a known Death Eater, had not been announced with other staffing changes, was a potentially useful ally to You-Know-Who and please Merlin _no_ , not involved in teaching any longer.

Q twisted around on his heel, very slowly, not wanting to believe it. “What,” Q managed, voice laudably steady, “are you doing here?”

Silva looked almost precisely as Q remembered, barring something about his face that didn’t seem quite right. White-blonde, bleached hair, perfectly tied back in a casual manner. Silva’s slick of a smile, quirking upright as he looked over Q, and Q remaining as firm as he could; he was the afterimage of nightmares, and _shouldn’t have been there_.

“Well,” Silva told him, moving closer, Q controlling the urge to back away. “You were later than expected, some assumed you were not coming. Hogwarts needed an Arithmany teacher – Severus got in touch.”

Q raised an eyebrow. “Superb. Then you’ll be leaving imminently.”

Silva’s smile became a little more pronounced, unpleasantly enough. “Not as such. Teaching assistants are valuable things, and since you’re _so_ keen on being with your students, well. It seems a pity to bar you.”

“We can see what Severus says to that,” Q returned, perhaps a little petulantly, anger lending him strength. “I will not be intimidated by you again. You will have to get used to that. I’m not a child, and I’m not the same person as two years ago.”

“No,” Silva conceded. “You’re _married_ now.”

The dash of malevolence in his final sentence made Q’s skin prickle unpleasantly. “Minerva,” he said instead, turning away, feeling his heart beat under his skin, so very loudly. “Come with me. We need to find the Headmaster.”

Q’s confidence was borrowed, but it would do for the time being. He strode away, feeling Silva’s eyes on him, hearing a small laugh or maybe he imagined it, but his hands were shaking a little and he really couldn’t have said whether or not he was completely losing his mind.

It was fairly possible that he was losing his mind.

“He’s going to stay, isn’t he?” Q asked Minerva quietly, factual, willing his pulse to slow. “He’s staying, and I’m going to remain here. Snape is presumably fully hostile?”

Minerva let out a sigh, sounding very tired indeed. “I came back a week or so ago. New rules have been put in place for this year, punishments et cetera, and all staff are expected to be complicit or face disciplinary procedures. Students need us here to protect them, which means I cannot see any options but to comply. They all know we’re in the Order, we know they’re Death Eaters, but gagging orders remain in place and they have us over a barrel. No external communications whatsoever, no contact. It’s a prison by any other name.”

“Merlin,” Q murmured, shaking his head slightly, disbelieving. “Alright. I can’t believe Snape turned out…”

“Yes?”

Q was already getting a touch tired of people appearing behind him. “Severus,” he said formally, nodding to the new Headmaster a little stiffly. “I understand Silva is back in Hogwarts?”

“You were absent, and given your… family ties,” Snape said, with soft, drawling nasality, “it was assumed that you would be absent for the duration of this year. As it happens, I believe you are a valuable member of the teaching staff; you will remain in Hogwarts.”

“My wage?”

Snape smiled without mirth. “Unchanged. You will be focusing on Arithmancy, and remedial classes for younger years. This term’s itinerary is to be given to me by tomorrow morning, detailing what you will be doing with each class; naturally most will be held after the end of a given day.”

Q was speechless for a moment. “Not only are you stripping me of my actual job, you expect a full amended lesson itinerary for a full term in under twenty-four hours?” he asked incredulously, while Minerva’s lips disappeared once again. “That’s absurd.”

Without a word on the subject, Snape raised an eyebrow, and walked away with his cloak billowing behind him. “Bastard,” Q muttered.

“You should go unpack,” Minerva advised. “New students should be here at six, we need to be at the Feast.”

Q nodded, feeling completely disconcerted by everything around him, and admittedly fairly frightened. Nevertheless, he nodded a farewell to Minerva, and started to skirt his way towards his usual room.

“Professor Q?”

It took Q only a moment to locate the voice: on the wall hung a painting of an ancient wizard, who watched Q with concern, eyebrows furrowed. “Hello,” he said lightly, ducking slightly to be at eye level. “Are you alright?”

“He wants to speak to you,” the ancient wizard told him, nodding towards the side of the painting; from behind the frame, Tobin crept out.

Tobin had been nothing short of a friend, over the past couple of years. Q had watched him turn from a fairly shy young man into a charming young woman.

As such, seeing him in a suit, his long blond hair neatly cropped, was a somewhat odd experience. “What happened?” Q asked, with genuine concern; Tobin was tangibly unhappy, body hunched over defensively. “ _Tobin_ , talk to me.”

Tobin shrugged slightly. “S’okay,” he mumbled. “They said I had to, I was a bad influence… doesn’t matter. Q, Professor Silva’s back, and he…”

“I know,” Q interrupted. “Saw him already. Don’t worry about it; I’m not intending to let him do what he did last time. I’m…”

“We’re looking out for you,” Tobin said quickly, cutting over Q’s words himself. “All of us. Portraits and ghosts. You’ve always been kind to us, and the school, Hogwarts, it’s all gone wrong…”

The elderly wizard behind rapped Tobin on the head with the walking stick he was holding. “Walls have ears,” he chastised, Tobin blushing slightly before nodding. “He is correct, however.”

Q gave a small bow of respect. “I am honoured,” he told them honestly. “I hope to repay the favour at some stage, I owe you all so much… sorry, what’s your name, sir?”

“ _Sir_ ,” the wizard returned, sounding rather impressed. “I like that. I am Oswald Dramatis, dear boy.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Q told him; the elderly paintings tended to like the old formalities, the types of manners that were half-dead now. “I have to go, but thank you again, both of you. Tobin, if I can do anything at all…”

Tobin shook his head quickly, expression too-heavy. “You have enough yourself,” he said quickly, and waved Q away; Q did as bidden, finding his room fairly quickly.

Beth smiled at him, motherly as ever. “Be safe,” she told him gently, swinging open the portrait to allow Q access, shutting with unusual quickness, as though afraid another could slip in if she lingered.

Q let out a slow breath, chucking his bag haphazardly onto the desk chair, and letting himself collapse slightly onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. He always missed Bond, when he was here on his own; this was Bond’s space, once, and Q could still the echoes of somebody he’d loved if he looked hard enough.

Speaking of which; he tugged his phone out, somewhat surprised to see that his message was from Mycroft: _Bond has been suitably subdued, although still frantic. Sherlock is livid. I will ensure that neither do anything idiotic. I expect updates on your safety, as do we all. MH._

Q tapped out a quick reply: _Here and safe. Situation precarious. Will update after Feast. I love you all. Q_

Intelligently, Q deigned not to mention anything about Silva; Bond would probably attack Hogwarts solo, Sherlock would go quantifiably insane, and Mycroft would probably be little better. Q would wait a day or so before dropping that particular bombshell.

In the interim, he unpacked everything with a few wand waves that would have made Molly Weasley despair, and settled to try and work out a lesson itinerary when he had no real idea of what was going on; he let out a breath, and started forming when he would hold his classes. Upper years could be later in the evenings or weekends, youngers just after the end of the school day.

Quite frankly, it was going to be a hell of a lot of work. Q was aware that he needed to brush up on some aspects of Charms and Runes before he attempted any classes whatsoever, and Slughorn would have to deal with Potions given that it had forever been Q’s weakest subject.

By the time of the Feast, Q had triumphantly started to sketch out his lessons, and was able to traipse down with the sensation that he might be able to finish and actually get some sleep at the end of it.

The Great Hall was festooned with Slytherin banners. The Sorting Hat was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, a seating plan had been implemented; nobody was sitting with friends, all Houses integrated, Snape in Dumbledore’s chair – a fact that made Q actively furious – and the Order-related staff glancing at Q apologetically as he was filtered into the seat next to Silva.

It didn’t surprise him. The Carrows were grinning malevolently, stalking between the tables and essentially intimidating everybody present.

Snape stood. “Good evening,” he told him, voice carrying over the perfect silence of the Hall. “First-years, the Sorting will not be occurring as it has traditionally; you are all being placed in Slytherin, as your Pureblood status would naturally decree regardless. The rest of you will remain in your houses – passwords and entrances will be known throughout the staff and students. There is a new list of contraband that you all need to adhere to. Visits to Hogsmeade are only permitted with full supervision. Anybody found breaching these rules will be punished, and I would very strongly advise nobody to test this.”

Hogwarts had been whittled down to mostly Purebloods – many half-bloods and all Muggle-borns were gone – which meant, in practise, that the school had a good quarter of its students missing. Q glanced around, accidently catching Alecto Carrow’s eye, watching her grin slide into place and darting his gaze away again.

“As you will have seen, we have new staff,” Snape continued to drawl. “In History of Magic, Professor Amycus Carrow. Muggle Studies will be taken by Professor Alecto Carrow, and Defence Against the Dark Arts by Professor Moriarty. You will also notice that Professor Silva has returned to take over Arithmancy. Professor Q…”

“Bond,” Q interrupted, with a surge of authority he hadn’t quite known he possessed, standing, everybody’s gazes landing instantly on him. “I will be taking his name, for the purposes of this year onwards.”

Snape looked at him, utterly impassive, and was silent for a full ten seconds.

“Professor Bond,” he continued, as Q sat back down with as much dignity as he could muster, Silva’s eyes _blazing_ , “will be a teaching assistant for this year.”

Q couldn’t help the burning of anger that festered under his skin, the humiliation of it; he deserved better than this, than Silva’s smile visible out of the corner of Q’s eye, Moriarty’s small but notable laugh.

“No communications are to leave the castle without express permission. You may each write one letter, each week, to your parents – they are to be handed in to a member of staff to be vetted before being sent.”

“You can’t stop us talking to our families.”

Q closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath. Cho Chang had stood up, her voice young and bouncing off the walls, into the dingy sky. A table along, Neville stood, joining her. Colin Creevey. Lavender Brown. In short, everybody who had ever been a part of Dumbledore’s Army began to stand in silent support.

“Our parents deserve to know we’re safe,” Seamus Finnigan supplemented.

Snape raised an eyebrow. “Be wary, Mr Finnigan – your blood status places you in a precarious position already,” he said dangerously. “You will do as you are told, am I being quite clear?”

“… and what exactly are you going to take out?” Neville added. “That Dumbledore’s murderer is caging students…”

Neville was not given the chance to finish his sentence. Instead, a curse flew across the Hall, hitting him squarely in the chest; he screamed wrenchingly, as Q stood – along with half the teaching staff – wands extended at a grinning Moriarty.

Snape did nothing, except, in a ringing and terrible voice, order: “ _Sit down_.”

“This is unacceptable,” Minerva told him lividly, accent unbelievably pronounced in her rage. “They are _children_ , Severus, and I will not allow…”

Another swipe of a wand, and Minerva was rendered silent. “Another word, and you will be arrested on the grounds of defying the Ministry of Magic’s newest educational edicts, and thrown into Azkaban,” Snape told her dangerously. “That is my final word on the subject, do I make myself clear?”

Nobody dared argue. Neville pulled himself back into his chair, shaking violently, nobody making eye contact and all pretending it wasn’t happening, younger students crying very quietly.

Q returned to his own seat, head spinning. This was worse, so much worse, than he had imagined it would be. He had no words for what Hogwarts had become, now, with students and staff alike half-shaking in shock, Q reeling.

In spite of everything, Q didn’t regret coming back, not for a single moment. The staff would need one another for support, the students needed protection, and Merlin knew they couldn’t afford another Death Eater replacing a staff member. There were more than enough already present and active.

Q gave himself another breath, another second to compose him, steeling his spine and preparing as best he could.

This much, he could – and would – handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts, comments, ideas are eagerly pounced upon, should you have the time or indeed inclination. Hope you enjoyed! Jen.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, apologies for belated update, real life is a bitch. Jen.

Out of spite and obstreperousness, Q had his lesson plan done in perfect time, the moment he had been informed of which classes he would be supervising. Severus shot him a curious, somewhat unfathomable glance as he handed over a copy, and Q smiled in a way that was frankly insubordinate before vanishing himself away.

It was somehow unsurprising that he had been placed, predominantly, with Silva. He hated, was unapologetically frightened of the man, but there were precious few options in a school that was running on cruelty.

Defence Against the Dark Arts had become a Dark Arts class, and stage-managed by a man who made Bellatrix Lestrange seem well-balanced. Jim Moriarty had nothing but sheer _joy_ for his subject, introducing children to worlds of frightening magic they had no idea what to do with; the younger years were started off in torturing flies, duelling, moving up the upper years who were being tutored in perfecting Unforgivable spells.

Muggle Studies was simply anti-Muggle propaganda, without apology. The ways in which Muggles had stunted the growth of the Wizarding world, teaching how they were animals, untutored, unclassed. Sherlock appeared as the subject of conversation in the upper years, as an example of a traitor to the name of wizard, the most repugnant of beings.

Q was actually rather proud, in a weird way. His brother may have been reviled, but it was considerably better than being admired by the types of people currently running Hogwarts. The day Sherlock was mentioned, Q sent a text outlining all that had been said; Sherlock’s response ran: _Excellent. I shall endeavour to be progressively more obnoxious. SH_.

The oddest difference in Hogwarts was the lack of elective studies. All students took all subjects; the work load didn’t change as years progressed, it simply became a fact that the school day was longer, lessons occurred across the weekends, upper years finding themselves in perpetual classes. Homework was still expected in the same quantities as previously, standards of work were expected to be perfect throughout.

As a direct consequence, Q found himself exceptionally overworked. All subjects expected their students to be exemplary; Snape monitored immediately, peeling off those that were inadequate and sending them for remedial lessons. Q was faced with dozens of terrified students within a handful of days, all desperately trying to avoid being punished.

“Those who are underperforming, and do not show marked improvements within a fortnight, will be punished,” Snape announced one evening, to a mostly-silent Great Hall of children on the first Friday evening of term. “Detentions will be managed by newer members of the teaching staff.”

Moriarty grinned with a manic edge, standing, waving companionably at the Hall. “All the naughty children with detentions this week, pop to my office at eight tomorrow morning,” he called brightly. “Lessons will commence at nine, as planned of course. See you there!”

Q exchanged a weighted look with Aurora; she was looking very tired, in a way Q hadn’t seen from her before. “Are you alright?” he murmured to her, in a quieter moment, students softly buzzing amongst themselves.

She shrugged slightly, looking over the assembled rows of Hogwarts students. “I miss Albus,” she said honestly, sadly; at the far end of the Hall, a second-year was talking too loudly, and was hit with a Silencing Charm, followed swiftly by a light Stinging Jinx. “Merlin. I’m frightened they’ll kill one of them, in the end.”

“We would never destroy those of Pure Blood,” a voice purred; Q felt his skin edge unpleasantly, tense in a way he had no way of describing.

Since their first lesson together, Silva had been returning to the unpleasant human being he had been towards the end of Q’s first year teaching; if it were not for almost the entirety of the staff body who were not Death Eaters protecting him, Q was fairly certain matters would have reached a head very quickly indeed.

Bond’s reaction had been understandably panicked: _Q, you have to come back. The others won’t be able to protect you forever. You cannot let him do that to you_.

Q wanted, very badly, to say that he believed Silva would not touch him. That he would be safe, somehow, and this was all going to be overblown, that – like every other time – he would avoid the tipping point by a hair’s breadth, and Bond would look after him afterwards.

_You have no idea what this place is like._

It had become immediately obvious that staff interventions were going to be frequently, if not constantly, necessary. The only way to ensure that children were not going to be hurt was to quickly step in, to diffuse the situation, take them out of it before they could be touched.

Q shook his head slightly, disbelievingly, as Silva slid into the chair next to him. “Yes, but you’re prepared to beat them or torture them,” he returned, in reply to Silva’s assertion that Purebloods would be safe from hurt, Q’s voice closed and tone acidic; the previous day, Silva had found a fourth-year doodling on a spare piece of parchment. Q had no time to respond before the boy had been punched, hard, in the face; his lip had split, and Q had been barred from giving help.

After that stage, Q had started patrolling the classes. Slight wand flicks were often enough to make the different between staff noticing or not; little notes, students talking in class, insufficient work, spelling errors. Q warned them before Silva noticed. It meant Q was able to do little things, and it had to be enough, at least for the time being.

Curfew and set bedtimes were enforced with terrifying strictness. Mercifully, the Death Eater staff faction did require sleep, too; the rotas for patrolling corridors still existed, and Q quite deliberately ensured he was on as many evenings as possible. By the look of things, most staff were fairly keen; Moriarty was one of the most frequent names to pop up, which didn’t come as much of a surprise.

The second evening of term, and Q ran into him on a night-time patrol: “Baby Holmes; what a delight,” Moriarty grinned, waggling his fingers eloquently.

“That would be Professor Bond, if you wouldn’t mind,” Q responded drily. Unlike Silva, Q wasn’t quite as afraid of Moriarty; the worse he was likely to do was a handful of curses, and Q had quite enough experience with those to mean he simply didn’t care as much.

Moriarty’s expression fell slightly, eyes incrementally darker. “I _do_ mind,” he returned, serpentine motions, an archetypical Slytherin. “Brave words, brave boy – but you are just that, aren’t you? A boy. A _child_.”

“At some stage, everybody will get bored of branding me a child,” Q returned, without missing a beat, certainly without betraying any fear or concern. “I’m old enough. You must have become a Death Eater when you were barely my age.”

Q willed his heartbeat to slow, as Moriarty leaned right in, centimetres from Q’s face. “Younger,” he breathed, his eyes frantic and black and darker than Q had known possible, black chaos.

In an instant, he had swirled away, robes billowing behind him. “I can hear you, little ones,” he called into the darkened corridor, playful. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

Moriarty was gone a moment later, and Q breathed out: “Anybody hiding, wait where you are. The portraits will guide you. Tell them Professor Q – Bond – sent you.”

With that, Q spirited himself away. Moriarty could potentially return, and the Carrows were probably out too; Q darted to the second floor, finding Miss Otterworth in her portrait of withering rhododendrons, and asked if any others had been seen.

She glanced around, conspiratorial. “Gryffindor Tower, Valeria says there are students still awake – nobody’s gone up there yet. I’ll tell the Fat Lady you’re coming.”

Q nodded, and half-ran towards the Gryffindor Tower, praying he would get there in time; Minerva would get into trouble too, if her House was proven to have dissenters in it.

The Fat Lady was waiting for him, swung the portrait hole open; inside, a handful of students – Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley, among a couple of others – were talking softly, coins in hand. They jumped up when the portrait hole opened, Neville immediately stepping forward as though to protect Ginny, Ginny herself reflexively (and more convincingly) brandishing her own wand.

“All of you, get to bed _right now_ , before anybody comes,” Q hissed at them, eyes wide, half-expecting the portrait hole to open as the less experienced students stood gaping at him. “ _Now_.”

The group scurried without further question, Ginny nodding her gratitude to Q before darting up the girls’ staircase.

Q felt a spell hit him squarely in the lower back. He crumpled. “Who was in here?” a voice spat at him. “ _Oi_. We know there was students in ‘ere, out of bed.”

The Carrows. Both of them, looking over Q with murderous expressions as he tried to pick himself up. It was weird; Q had never been in the Gryffindor common room in his life, and his first time was spent trying to rescue some very idiotic students from being harmed, and he wasn’t even really able to look around it properly.

“What on _earth_ do you think you’re doing?”

Minerva’s burr rang out, surprisingly loud, shocking the Carrows into spinning around; Q stumbled himself to standing, breath coming a little erratically. Minerva was in a very splendid dressing gown, looking like anger incarnate.

“We had students out of bed, and Professor _Bond_ ,” Amycus spat, throwing out Bond’s name like an insult, “decides to send ‘em on their way without _punishment_.”

“Do you have proof?” Minerva asked conversationally, eyebrow arched, tone frosty. “I see no evidence of students doing anything at all. I’m sure Professor Bond was simply checking on your behalf, and would have reported any misdemeanours.”

Q was pathetically grateful that the various students had got away; presumably other students had been warned off coming out to see what the commotion was about, and mercifully so: Alecto looked like she wanted nothing more than to jinx something senseless.

“How’d he get in here, then?” Amycus continued, his voice rising. “We get given passwords for Gryffindor, _he_ doesn’t.”

“I would take that up with the Fat Lady – I expect she allowed Q in given that he is, after all, another staff member,” Minerva told him primly. “Now, before we wake the students, I feel it would be best to absent ourselves, yes?”

Alecto let out something of a snarl, thwarted in her efforts to cause pain; Q raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m sure Raoul would love to know what you’ve been up to, pretty boy,” she taunted, smirking as she saw the flicker of a reaction in Q’s expression, and slid out of the portrait hole after her brother.

 _HQ is staying safe, and our haven is nearly full_ , Bond texted, a couple of weeks later. _It’s difficult. Are you alright?_

Q hesitated, fingers hovering over the keys, entirely uncertain of how to answer that question. He ignored it instead, circumnavigating the question with further queries into the world outside the Hogwarts microcosm, _any_ stories that were displaced from the curious world Q now inhabited.

Honestly, Q was just growing tired. His work load was constant and incredibly wearing, trying to balance classes with extra tutorials with night-time rotas with the simple stress of the environment, and within a week Q was feeling the strain eating away at the edges of his limbs, atrophying him by inches.

Silva seemed everywhere at once. Increasingly so, as term truly wore in, as the routines became established and everybody stopped pretending they could make anything work as normal; everybody was stretched to breaking point, students were having small breakdowns in corridors and being made to ‘toughen up’ if they were found, the pressure on performance for all students was beyond belief, and it was so hard, _so hard_ , to keep on top of it.

“You look tired, little Q.”

Q let out a frustrated huff. “For the last _bloody_ time, stop calling me that,” he snapped, spinning to face Silva. “I’m an adult. Definitely an adult, and I’m married, and you being a fucking creep is not going to change that.”

Silva, curiously, didn’t seem to be angry at Q’s outburst. Instead, his mouth quirked in a strange smile: “Other things, perhaps, might,” he suggested, casually flippant, sauntering off again with his pale robes moving, ghost-like, after him.

After a point, Silva could needle his way beneath anybody’s skin, let alone one who had been hurt by him before.

In particular, given that he and Jim Moriarty were apparently trying to extract information on the Order from those remaining within Hogwarts’ walls.

They started with Filius. A strange choice – he had never been that close to the Order to start off with – and graduated onto Minerva, less than a week later. By the end of September, Madam Pomfrey had been faced with both Minerva and Filius in states of dishevelment.

Little changed, other than the stubbornness of everybody concerned. It actually served to unify the staff in a way nobody had known could be quite so virulent; the staff started to pass around copies of The Quibbler, handheld radios appeared out of nowhere, students started knowing and using concealment charms and transfiguring items into nothing the moment any Dark staff were around.

It was brilliant.

“Honestly, I’m fine,” Q soothed, phone held against his ear, smiling up at the ceiling; he was absurdly grateful for the phone lines, his lifeline out of the castle, Bond’s voice a worried but soothing presence in his ear. It was easy to lie, and he did so fluidly: “I’m doing better than many, actually. Mostly tired, I need sleep… up at sixish tomorrow morning.”

“ _Why so early?!_ ”

“Detentions, I’m hoping to intervene before it goes too far,” Q said, through a yawn. “They were all my students, remedial lessons with insufficient improvement, the lowest performers in all my bloody classes have been peeled off. Can’t help but feel I’m responsible a bit, so, that should make for a fun morning.”

Bond’s voice was somewhere between exasperated and worried; Q could see his expression, closing his eyes to listen to it better. “ _It’s not your fault. You can’t try and take responsibility for every student, Q, you’re going to burn yourself out…_ ”

“We’re all doing it,” Q interjected softly. “All of us. All the staff, everybody who isn’t… they targeted Poppy, just because she’s been giving out painkillers and healing potions to students for mass distribution. Umbridge’s quills, the blood ones, they’re out in full force – every teacher has been told we have to use them if we want to manage our own detentions, and even then, we have to run the misdemeanour past the Carrows or equivalent in case they think it merits more severe punishment…”

“Q, you’re going to get hurt.”

Q’s smile faded slightly, eyes deadening very incrementally behind the glint of his glasses. “Yes,” he agreed softly. “I know.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... all of the warnings. Just, yeah. All the warnings.

They appeared gradually.

The first caused mass chaos. Nobody knew how it had happened, how anybody had the _nerve_ , let alone how they had avoided the patrols; the rota was stepped up immediately, all staff drawn into nightly stalking of the corridors to avoid it happening again.

**_Dumbledore’s Army Lives_ **

Q didn’t know whether to applaud or throw up at the sheer gall of it. There were only so many possible suspects, and none of them were especially apologetic; Q had taught most of them once, conducted his secret DADA lessons in his first year at Hogwarts with students who were now trying to fight back against the regime.

“Be very careful,” Q murmured to Ginny Weasley, collaring her in a corridor a day or so after the painted sign had been found, on the wall of the third floor. “You, of all people, are likely to be watched.”

Ginny nodded, her eyes steeled and her smile unforced; she was relishing, _breathing_ the chance to fight back.

They all were. Luna Lovegood – who was settled at the back of the classroom at one stage, calming ignoring Professor Silva’s teachings – smiled at Q, and made the small gesture Q recognised from when he had first truly known her: fingers pressed to her lips, to her heart. Her support, her faith.

As time wore on, however, Q couldn’t up but seriously consider that he may not make it a long way past Christmas as a member of the teaching staff. For all the protection the Order were trying to give him, all the work he was succeeding with in Hogwarts, Q was painfully, horribly tired.

“We still want information about the Order of the Phoenix,” Silva told him one evening; Q was roped into having tea with the man most evenings, which he consented to mostly because it meant access to Earl Grey and the optimistic hope that Silva would be in a better mood the next day. “Your life would be considerably more pleasant if you gave us what we want to hear.”

Q’s smile was mirthless: “My life is perfectly pleasant as it is, thank you,” he returned, with precision, and drank more of his tea.

Silva was beginning to scare him.

Their shared lessons were most days; Silva had evidently spoken to Snape, ensuring that Q’s assistance in classes was focused on Arithmancy and Dark Arts classes. Other staff members had valiantly tried to convince Snape that they needed assistance in their lessons, only to be mostly refused.

Q stayed in Arithmancy therefore, taking comfort in the subject he had always loved more than any other. Many of the students, especially in upper years, found Arithmancy nightmarish; it had never been compulsory before, and many students were being thrown into work far beyond their capabilities after years of not needing to study it.

The work was almost enjoyable, in that regard. Except that Silva was smiling at him now in a way that boded badly, and the tea sessions were more frequent. Fingers lingered on Q’s arm, touches more frequent. The exchanges between Silva and Moriarty seemed to be ending in a playful leer from the latter, and a smug expression that Q half-recognised, felt honestly sick at the sight of.

“You have to leave,” Minerva told him frankly, one evening; Q had escaped yet another tea – this time stretching to dinner – to find Minerva awake in her office, looking as tired as Q felt. “At Christmas, you should be able to get out of the castle. You can’t come back. Silva is no longer being especially subtle…”

Q let out a slow breath. “I know,” he interrupted, before Minerva could say much more. “I know, and I’m trying to work out what to do – they’re going for me next, I know that. They think I’ll buckle where you all didn’t, especially given that I’m so close to the Order…

“You’ve been tortured before,” Minerva also pointed out gently. “You’re going to be…”

“If you say fragile or an equivalent, I’ll hex you,” Q told her sharply. “I’m very bored of everybody thinking I’m some wilting bloody flower. This is my world, too. I’m making sacrifices, but I managed to get five kids of a detention earlier today by distracting Silva with a cup of coffee! Things like that. Like you, I will make my sacrifices, and I’ll do so willingly and knowingly.”

Minerva shook her head slightly, looking very sad indeed: “Yes, Q. But some of us have more to lose than others.”

There was little to be said to that, and so Q didn’t say anything at all. Honestly, he simply didn’t want to believe that he was at quite such risk; everybody was fighting, everybody was struggling. Despite her stint in St Mungo’s the previous year, Minerva had still been attacked by Moriarty for supposed information, and returned to work the next day without apology. The hex mark above Poppy’s eye had yet to fully heal. Filius had stopped smiling.

_**Believe in Harry Potter** _

The signs were wonderful and awful, and the Dark factions became a lot angrier.

“Whoever is responsible for debasing the wall of the fourth-floor corridor will be found,” Snape told the collected school. “If you have any information, you are all strongly encouraged to come forward – you will be rewarded accordingly.”

Thus, the regime took on a new edge. Younger years in particular were coerced with promises of extra letters home, of homework extensions, of immunity from detention or punishment; within a handful of days, half the school had been denounced. Rumours were rampant.

Naturally, the remnants of Dumbledore’s Army were all informed against at some stage or another. Q tremendously doubted there were any traitors amongst them, but it was fairly common knowledge which were outspoken. It made a lot of sense, regardless of evidence, to denounce them.

Q found Padma Patil sobbing in the middle of the Dark Arts classroom. Moriarty watched Q enter with a small smirk, ignoring the young woman he had been unravelling, and sauntered into his own office. “Padma, are you alright?” Q asked urgently; she had been, like so many others, one of those he had given lessons to two years previously. Q had always been immensely fond of her, and indeed her sibling.

“Crabbe,” she managed, with a small sob. “He d-denounced me and P-Professor Moriarty let him…”

Moriarty’s smirk suddenly made sense: he hadn’t been the one wielding the wand. “He let Crabbe curse you?” Q asked, for clarification, breath coming erratically out of sheer disbelief. “He’s a _student_.”

Padma was past the point of caring what Crabbe was or wasn’t; Q helped her up, voice gentle as he helped her to the Hospital Wing. En route, he curtly told a passing painting that Parvati Patil needed to be alerted; the painting did immediately as bidden, while Q watched bruises forming on Padma’s skin in honest shock.

“ _Crabbe_?!” Minerva repeated later, agape; Q nodded wearily, sliding into his chair at the High Table in the Hall and grabbing lumpy potato with a vengeance. “Surely there’s been a…”

“A mistake?” Q supplemented dully. “I doubt it. Look at him.”

On the Slytherin table, Crabbe appeared to be the subject of universal praise and attention; others crowded around him with sycophantic smiles, the Carrows were ignoring the noise and allowing them to do as they liked.

“Impressive, isn’t it, what people will do,” Moriarty lilted at them, casting himself down in another chair, dark eyes fixed on the pair. “So sad, but she needed to be taught. She is such a naughty, naughty child. Once such a _good_ student too. Tut tut. So sad.”

Minerva looked closer to snapping than Q was; he placed a hand on her arm, diffusing the tension that was making every muscle in her body stand out. “That girl is a braver woman than your _protégées_ ,” she said, spitting out the word with venom, “could begin to know.”

Moriarty’s eyebrow raised, playful, curious. “I would be careful where you place allegiances,” he sang, picking apart a chicken thigh daintily as he spoke. “You never know who might get hurt.”

On the last word, Q could have sworn Moriarty’s gaze flicked up to him.

_**Harry Potter Lives** _

“I miss you,” Q told Bond honestly, phone cradled against his ear, propped up at his desk and eyes glancing half-vacantly at the impossible quantities of paperwork he needed to complete for the following morning. “How is… I mean, is there any word at all?”

“ _Not for a while, but we think You-Know-Who would have publicised everywhere if he was dead_ ,” Bond explained, sounding strained. “ _In the current climate, it would be to their benefit if they could spread that news around, but nobody would believe it. I think most people have come to terms with the fact that the Ministry has fallen, but they don’t have the words or the ability to fight… Merlin, Q, it’s chaos._ ”

“What do you mean?”

“ _Disappearances, suppression of information, interrogations – everybody is terrified. Harbouring Muggle-borns has the potential for a life sentence, and nobody has seen anybody shipped to Azkaban since, but rumours are flying that they simply execute…_ ”

There was a knock on Q’s door; Q immediately hung up, switched the phone off and stashed it in his bag before opening the portrait.

“No. Go away,” Q said simply, and attempted to close the entrance; Beth, on the other side, was equally vociferous, and being blithely ignored by Raoul Silva. “I said _go away_ , it’s the middle of the bloody night…”

Silva pushed Q back and stepped in, and Q very rapidly realised that there was more than just Silva present; the Carrows, Moriarty, all standing outside with expressions ranging from curious to manic, abruptly forcing themselves into Q’s rooms. “ _Get out_ ,” Q said again, wand extended; it took an eye roll and a flick of both Silva and Amycus’s wand to render Q disarmed.

“Immobilus,” Silva purred, and Q both froze in situ, and found his mind _screaming_ with the memories of the last time he had been immobilised by Silva. “Now, little Q, we have been told to search your rooms.”

“We wouldn’t want you to be in possession of anything _naughty_ ,” Jim supplemented; with an eloquent circle of his wand, he wrenched every single drawer from Q’s desk, disgorging their contents across his floor.

Q watched, stranded, as the four of them tore his room to shreds. Silva was transparently more focused on Q than the others – they were simply enjoying the chance to wreck things – and was, of course, the one to find Q’s wedding photograph and Everlasting Sugar Quill.

Jim was laughing, the Carrows sharing in the jokes as Q’s clothes were rifled through, everything he owned splayed across the floor. “Now, now,” Silva told him softly, “we can’t have this sort of thing. A _terrible_ influence on students, having such allegiances, no?”

It was obvious, what Silva was about to do. Of course, it didn’t make it any easier.

Q watched his wedding photo go up in flames. His own image immortalised in the photograph, holding onto Bond in terror as their image was consumed, the miniature wedding guests equally terrified before falling to ash.

Never had Q hated Silva quite as much as in that moment.

“Anything Order-related is to be destroyed,” Silva told Q, body sliding closer to him, fingers trailing over Q’s face tenderly. “Can’t have you openly supporting the _enemy_ now, can we? It’s bad enough that you made the very silly decision of _marrying_ one of them.”

Alecto, from the other side of the room, let out a sharp cackle and seemed about to speak; Moriarty cut her off. “Don’t give it away darling, he’ll find out soon enough.”

“ _No_ ,” Q could feel himself silently shrieking, as Amycus picked up his rucksack, panic staining all thoughts out of focus.

They were going to kill him for it. More than that, _far_ more than that, he was going to lose Bond, and he couldn’t, he could not _bear_ to lose his lifeline.

The phone spilt onto the bed, and Q let out a short, soft breath.

“What,” Moriarty purred, everybody abruptly still, silent. “is _this_?”

A flick of Silva’s wand, and Q regained control of his faculties once again, eyes darting around the room and landing again on the phone, his phone. “I was given it by a friend,” Q said quickly, almost the truth. “It doesn’t work as an actual phone, Muggle signals are distorted by spellwork, it’s just a… it’s just for me, just something for me, I’ve been working on it...”

The Carrows would probably have bought it, if it had just been them. Unfortunately, Silva knew Q too well, and Moriarty could simply see the fault lines in Q’s lies. “Now, now,” Silva said slowly. “Let’s try again, shall we.”

“Give me my wand back, and I’ll show you,” Q asked, as bravely as he could manage, feeling his pulse slam erratically in his throat; this had to work, _it had to_ , the Order depended on the phones as a means of communication, and nobody could know precisely what Q had done. They could not be allowed to work out how the phones worked, or they could start trying to tap in.

Even the Carrows saw the flaw there: “Tell us what it is, first,” Amycus shot at him.

Q trained his most patronising gaze on the man, voice crisp. “It is a conduit for magical signals, hijacking Muggle phone lines,” he announced coldly. “A way of monitoring Muggle behaviours. Still a prototype, and requires certain spellworks to activate – if you don’t want me to show you, fine, but you won’t get anything useful from it.”

Silva had turned it on; Q prayed to all things he could think of that nobody would decide to text him. “Just a mobile phone,” Silva nodded, glancing it over, holding it between elegant fingers. “Go on. Let’s see what you’ve done with it, hmm?”

Moriarty looked deeply suspicious, but Silva was evidently taking charge; he extended Q’s wand outwards, letting it return to Q’s capable hands. “Now don’t be difficult,” he reminded the younger man softly. “We will have to take _serious_ action otherwise.”

Due warning, and one Q was nonetheless content that he would be entirely ignoring; he took a step forward, wand darting over the phone still nestled in Silva’s grip, and couldn’t quite help a smirk of triumph as the thing exploded.

Shrapnel went everywhere, and Silva let out a yell as the palm of his hand was burned, dropping the destroyed remnant which proceeded to smoke on Q’s carpet. Q wasted any chance of a decent fight by taking a second to make sure the phone was beyond repair; by the time he’d established that it was, he had already been hit by several spells, leaving him crumpled against the opposite wall.

“Take it away,” Moriarty crowed at Raoul; the latter took several steps forward, and simply kicked Q in the stomach. “ _Accio_ ,” Moriarty added, letting Q’s wand fly into his grip. “Can I play?”

Another couple of punishing kicks, Q letting out sounds like a wounded animal and trying to curl his body away; Silva indicated the man’s form with a disgusted, livid expression, briefly pausing to heal the burns to his palm. “Don’t touch his face,” he spat to the other three, and stalked back to Q’s rucksack, searching for anything else.

Out of necessity, Q mostly tuned out the next however-long of his life. Time became elastic, seemed to move around him differently to anything he had known before, and _fuck_ but they were enjoying themselves. Moriarty let out a triumphant crow as Q’s rib snapped under a particular brutal kick, the Carrows far lazier and simply casting out various hexes, Q retching violently and trying not to openly sob as they simply hurt him.

Moriarty was bored first; he went back to help Silva destroy the last of Q’s possessions. Q couldn’t move much; he could only distantly see, through cracked lenses, papers shredding in midair, small fires cropping up across his room and crackling merrily to themselves. The wand stand Bond had given him for his last birthday, splintering across the floor, pages of books, the few things Q had.

It was this, far more than any pain they were inflicting, that caused Q to completely break down. The quill Mycroft had given him when he left Hogwarts, spiralling into flames, Q unable to even reach out, trying to beg them to stop without air left to form words.

“ _Enough_.”

Q flinched despite himself, cringing into a tighter ball, not looking up; Snape’s voice was always recognisable, and it was rather unlikely that he was about to be much help.

“What,” he asked, voice dangerous and low and frightening, “is going on?”

On the floor, Q coughed slightly, letting out an inadvertent noise and tasting blood on his tongue. “Go on?” Moriarty asked Q’s prone form with tangible, lethal sarcasm. “If you have something to say, baby Holmes.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Q mumbled, and flinched violently as Moriarty raised his wand, unable to help a hiccupping sob of anticipation.

Above his head, Snape was being debriefed. Q wasn’t really listening. Mostly, Q was struggling to remain conscious, pain stabbing in and through and over him, and _Merlin_ but he’d forgotten how it felt to be in pain like this.

They were leaving, Q realised. Q couldn’t see properly, couldn’t make thoughts cohere very well, still coughing slightly and feeling blood actually collect in his mouth. Silva was the most vocal, Q could recognise the timbre, but even he was going – and a moment later, Q was alone with Snape.

A wand moved over Q’s body carefully, and Q started to be able to breathe again. “You will need to offer an explanation,” Snape told him curtly, the healing rudimentary but enough to allow Q movement once again. “Raoul is also fairly adamant that you remain under closer supervision in his quarters, based on your recent behaviour.”

Still barely coherent, and yet Q could very easily join the dots on that front, and every part of his body rippled with defensive tension: he would not allow it, he would _not_.

“I have told him that will not be necessary,” Snape continued, standing, hair hanging around his face and skin sallow. “Another incident like this and I may allow it. You are no longer in the Order of the Phoenix. Make yourself an enemy, and you will be treated as one.”

Q was near enough able to sit, propping himself up awkwardly on one hand and retrieving his cracked glasses; Snape delivered his wand back, and Q accepted it with possessive need, curling it close to his chest.

“Hospital Wing. You are expected to be in classes as usual,” Snape completed, and left; Q glanced after him, seeing him addressing Beth, asking her to get word to Poppy that Q would need help.

The footsteps receded, Q dimly aware that Snape had just rescued him for some indeterminate reason, and he had no idea why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts, your words, make my heart fly. Jen.


	16. Chapter 16

Q’s fragile link to the outside world had been shattered, and he was alone. The messages through to the Order, to his husband and anything of his life outside Hogwarts had been stalled, and Q didn’t have a tremendously large amount left in him. Hogwarts had been oppressive enough on its own; trying to keep going through without any promise of Bond or sanity in general at the end began to take a toll very quickly indeed.

Part of it was just that Q was tired, and knew they could see it. The attack on his own rooms, his things, had been something of a final straw.

Minerva had been tangibly horrified; Q, at four in the morning, knocking on her door. “I’m sorry to ask,” he had murmured, “but could I stay here for the rest of the night?”

Poppy had done a decent enough job patching Q up, but he hated the Hospital Wing. As a staff member, it was difficult to feel anything but painfully conspicuous; the moment Poppy had done what she could, Q had escaped to Minerva’s as one of the few safe spaces he could think of.

“You didn’t take yours, did you?” Q asked a little dully, voice faded out a touch. Minerva took a moment to understand the question, before shaking her head: only Q had been optimistic enough to risk a mobile phone in the Hogwarts grounds. “I just want to let him know I’m alright, I don’t… they’re going to be watching me very closely now, I know that. I don’t think I can risk trying again, I can’t keep going through this Minerva, I just…”

Minerva had hushed him gently, and beckoned him in, a few deft wand movements fixing up a bed which Q fell into and passed out in almost instantly.

The next morning was, unsurprisingly, less fun.

“A presentation on the fallacies of Wizards pretending to be Muggles,” Q read aloud, eyes narrowing. “Okay, fine, ha bloody ha. You’re not seriously asking me to do this? He’s still my brother, for fuck’s sake, and whether it fits your doctrine or not I’m damned if I’m going to tell children that it’s a problem. It isn’t. It needs monitoring, but Sherlock got to his late twenties before wizards like you cursed him out of being able to deal with it…”

Q was given a harsh slap around the face, and fell quiet for a moment. “Do it,” Amycus growled at him.

“Yes, physical assault is always the best way to make people do something you want,” Q returned drily; he couldn’t help a fairly violent flinch at Amycus’s movements, although nothing actually happened. A point in itself, it would seem. “Touché. I still won’t do it.”

“We’ll see,” Amycus hissed, and chucked a pamphlet at Q’s head before stalking off.

Q was aware that there were better parting sentence one could wish to hear from somebody like Amycus Carrow, but placed those thoughts carefully in a box and ignored them. 

_In Defence of Free Will – Sherlock Holmes_

For a very long moment, Q just stared blankly. He scanned through the pamphlet, reading everything Sherlock had – apparently – written, in flagrant breach of all Ministry edicts. It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Q started to laugh, somewhat hysterically, reading through it again and again.

The first night Q slept back in his rooms, after the Dark attack, he couldn’t help but be afraid. Snape’s words lingered: if he continued his behaviour, Silva had suggested that Q be monitored far more closely, and Merlin but Q was not an idiot. Avoiding that was going to be of paramount importance if Q wanted to keep any semblance of sanity, and it was looking to be a toss-up between denouncing Sherlock or keeping his own rooms.

Q’s strength could only stretch so far. “I can’t do it,” he told Silva softly, voice breaking around the edges. “Please. You can’t ask me do to that, he’s my _brother_.”

“He’s a blood traitor,” Silva returned, almost playfully, certainly without much sympathy. “You will have to accustom yourself to this idea, Q. Your brother is the highest form of traitor, and you have already been curiously protected from our Lord’s wrath thus far – do not push us, you won’t be safe forever.”

There was nothing to be said; Q felt the dance of Silva’s fingers over his spine, trailing eloquently downwards towards his arse, skimming over his robes and departing as briefly as they had arrived.

Time ticked; Q had been told to do the presentation on the Friday. On the Thursday evening, he spent a somewhat harassed dinner with Silva trying to communicate, somehow, that he could not and would not present anything that condemned Muggles, Muggle-borns or those who chose to live as Muggles.

“I’m sure that would come as a true disappointment,” Silva told him softly, danger courting the edges of his voice. “Really now, Q. Are you certain that this is the decision you will make? Are you _certain_ that there is no way of convincing you, hmm?”

Q let out a sad, directionless noise, spearing prawns out of paella with nothing short of vengeful hatred for the world and everything in it. “He is my _brother_ , for the last time, and I’m not going to be in _any sense_ complicit in teaching children anti-Muggle propaganda. I won’t do it.”

Silva smiled absentmindedly, eating rice delicately off his fork. “In which case, you will be expected to remain in my quarters from hereon in,” he stated simply, devastatingly. “I did rather suspect this may happen.”

“Yes, and I’m guessing you’re not unhappy either,” Q spat back, standing, leaving the remnants of the meal behind; Silva watched him go with unapologetic amusement. “I’m assuming that if I refuse, I’ll get a host of you knocking on my bloody door and destroying what’s left of my possessions?”

“That would just about cover it, yes,” Silva replied merrily enough, sipping a glass of wine and watching Q with something like curiosity, like excitement. “Defy me. I would adore watching, hmm?”

Q breathed out slowly, trying to think of options, finding nothing whatsoever. “Let me think,” he snapped, and continued moving to the door.

“At least finish your meal,” Silva told him, with a light _tsk_. “Very rude indeed, after the trouble I went to making it for us. I don’t trust the House Elves, this is my own family recipe.”

“Originally a Muggle dish however, if I recall correctly,” Q returned primly. “Good evening.”

With that, Q exited, letting the door slam shut behind him with a slightly smug sense of victory and imminent doom. Mercifully, Silva didn’t decide to follow, and Q made what seemed the only intelligent move: to quite definitely _not_ go to his own rooms, but instead find another colleague to stay with.

It didn’t seem fair to impose on Minerva again – he had done the same more than once that week – and Filius lived in the middle of nowhere. Instead, Q found himself tapping on Aurora’s door.

She had a light dressing gown around her shoulders, hair tied back in a loose ponytail; she glanced over Q tiredly, yawning a little and giving space for Q to come into her rooms. “Let me guess: Silva again?”

“Of course,” he returned, with a fairly equal level of exhaustion; middle of the night, middle of the _bloody_ night, and he was always with Silva these days. “I don’t think I’m safe in my rooms… I told him I wouldn’t do the presentation thing about Sherlock, so…”

Aurora let out a sympathetic sigh, putting the kettle on; she could make fairly good tea actually, unlike most of the rest of the staff. Q had never managed to be quite as close to her as Bond was, but they had taught together for far longer, knew one another far better. “He’s going to rape you,” she said bluntly, not unkindly.

Q froze.

It was hardly a novel concept. There was just something obscene, something terrifying, about it being stated so bluntly; it had been easy enough to circumnavigate the thought before, find some way of ignoring it or shrugging it off. “I don’t know what to do,” Q admitted softly.

Aurora’s gaze was sharp, intense. “We will find some way,” she stated slowly, pensively. “Q, darling, I’m worried you don’t have very long. No matter how long we delay it, you know he’s inches from escalating matters, and nobody is likely to stop him – we can try, but it’s practically being condoned by _higher powers_.”

The last words were spat like poison, and Q took a handful of vaguely steadying breaths. “Should I just make a run for it?” he asked quietly, hating himself for such bloody cowardice.

“It’s possible,” she confessed gently, reaching out a hand to cover his, so careful with him.

Q couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, he tried to grasp onto why this had ever seemed like a good idea, why in Merlin’s name he hadn’t just stayed with Bond and the Order, and kept his life ticking over somewhere he was less likely to be hurt.

The next morning dawned dank and cold. The snow had begun outside – winter had apparently decided to appear in late October rather than its customary emergence in December – and Q was supposed to do his presentation. 

Naturally, he was intending to refuse, and had thus begun to quietly begin packing up his belongings the previous evening with his jaw worryingly tight and pointedly pretending his hands were not shaking.

The Great Hall was filled with students, staff. Minerva continued to shoot him concerned glances, Filius was doing the same but more subtly, and Aurora was curiously quiet after their conversation the previous night. Q found himself playing absentmindedly with his wedding ring and reminding himself why he could not and would not tell young students that not practising magic made them somehow wrong, would not continue to promote ‘Magic is Might’ as a damned ethos, and this was all in his control and definitely a good idea.

The Dark teachers were waiting. Moriarty looked disgustingly excited, Snape impassive in a way only he could be, and Silva was smiling and waiting and watching. 

Q stayed still. Silva’s smile took on a slight edge.

“Professor Bond was asked to speak to you all this morning about a certain phenomenon amongst some wizards. I will be conducting that talk for him.”

It was a testimony to the silence that now reigned throughout all meals, all student gatherings, that no silence needed to be called; the words rang out across the Hall, and everybody turned in curiosity, almost in confusion.

None more so than Q, as Aurora continued to speak.

“Any of you with access to the Prophet should have heard of Sherlock Holmes,” Aurora continued, ignoring the low hiss of anger from behind her. “A non-practising wizard. Born with Wizarding powers, but electing to ignore the gifts he was born with to live amongst Muggles, barely associating with the Wizarding world.”

Silva looked openly livid, Moriarty’s gaze sliding snakelike between Aurora and Q, apparently realising there had been no forewarning; Q knew he was doing a very poor job of concealing his shock, but then, he couldn’t quite believe what Aurora was doing.

“Magic is a beautiful and extraordinary skill to possess,” Aurora continued, entirely oblivious, “and we are all fortunate. We were born with a power that shapes us all, has and will shape the rest of our lives.”

Aurora took a breath, and somehow, Q just knew: “However. A gift is not a compulsion, or it becomes a curse. Sherlock Holmes chose not to practise magic. Nobody was harmed in that decision, until the moment we – wizards – decided to take exception, to vilify, to assume that he was intrinsically _wrong_.”

Q couldn’t breathe. Aurora’s hand was closed over her wand, and nobody seemed to be daring to interrupt her. Everybody, Snape through to Minerva, was entirely transfixed with something between disbelief and palpable admiration.

“Albus Dumbledore died last summer, believing that it is not how we are born, but the choices we make, that define us.”

“… that’s enough.”

Apparently, Snape had finally reached his breaking point. The tension in Aurora’s body cranked up a notch, but she was apparently not finished.

“Magic is not might, not alone – it is what we choose to do with our magic that makes us mighty,” Aurora continued, voice picking up pace, audible anxiety. “Do not allow fear to make your decisions for you. Make your decisions, and whatever that decision is – just make sure it is something you can live with, whatever the repercussions may be.”

Her gaze flicked to Q for the shortest of seconds. 

“Sit _down_ ,” Snape snapped, standing, tangibly angry now, and Aurora was preparing, her final words ringing out:

“Nobody can tell you what is right or wrong. You are students to learn, but more importantly, to _question_ , and find out _for yourselves_. It is perfectly valid to decide that your needs are most important, but do not forget the people in this world like Sherlock Holmes who are being publically held as enemies for the sake of nothing but their pride.”

“Aurora, I will not tell you again.”

“It doesn’t _matter_ what anybody says or does or thinks – just don’t decide to _not choose_.”

Moriarty had stood too, other teachers wary, hands on wands, waiting for the inevitable.

“On that happy note, I am tendering my resignation with immediate effect,” she said brightly, and flipped over the High Table with a single wand flick.

The staff all yelped in shock, completely sideswiped for a moment. Q yelled “ _GET DOWN_ ” as jets of light began bouncing around the room, Moriarty attempted a Stunner and was cut short by Pomona, Snape waving for the Great Hall doors to shut but managing it too late; Aurora was already out the door.

As expected, everything was a little disjointed after that. It didn’t really help that the students were being just as difficult; anarchy had just about been encouraged by one of the more respected but quiet members of the teaching staff, and several were taking her message near enough directly to heart.

It took nearly two hours for everything to quieten down. Half the staff had gone in pursuit of Aurora, the rest were trying to calm down the students. A grand total of thirty-two students were given detention – usual suspects, plus some spares – and another handful awarded House Points for their part in antagonising and actively cursing the ones who had dared agree with Aurora’s sentiments.

Aurora probably had not anticipated it – or perhaps she had, Q couldn’t really tell – but her demonstration near enough ensured Q would not leave. He had his choices, and he knew precisely what decisions he could live with; the students needed protection. Q could offer it, he _would_ offer it, and that was how he would live.

In the aftermath of her departure, Q immediately went to Silva.

“My belongings are packed, I’ll ask a House Elf to take my bags over. I will go quietly, with absolutely no fuss or upset, on the proviso that I am responsible for conducting the requisite detentions in the aftermath of this morning’s events – Moriarty, the Carrows et cetera go _nowhere near_ ,” Q told him, without preamble, voice simple and curt. “If you won’t grant me it, I will make this more difficult, and get other members of staff on side – none of them know yet that I will be moving.”

Apparently, an easy life was a good enough enticement; Silva dipped his head in agreement, and everything moved remarkably smoothly from that point onwards.

Q went through a fairly normal day. The students were still rowdy, Jim tangibly itching for blood and being impressively unpleasant when given scope, but for the most part things ticked, and Q watched time pass.

After the day, he went to Silva’s quarters, as he frequently did; it was odd, to see his bags there. He took the liberty of unpacking a few items, hating himself for the pleasant surprise of a camp bed in the corner, nausea settling somewhere just beneath his sternum and threatening an appearance.

“Dinner!” Silva said, brightly enough.

The man had brought paella. Again. A cliché in motion, but then, the man was bleach blond, camper than a picnic basket, and practically a stereotype of himself at points. “Evening,” Q returned, with his enthusiasm admittedly slightly tempered.

“It has been an interesting day, no?” Silva enquired, not quite rhetorically. “Aurora, silly thing… and because of you, little Q.”

“I’m not little,” Q retorted, perhaps a little petulantly. “She did what she had do.”

“Don’t we all,” Silva returned softly, a black edge shadowing his voice.

Q speared into the proffered bowl of paella, and didn’t say another word.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updates, it's been a bit of a nightmare time for me! Hope you guys enjoy. Jen.

The next morning, Q slipped out of Silva’s rooms as early as he could, and almost _laughed_ with joy to see another slogan, this time directly opposite a collection of paintings who were vehemently refusing to admit that they’d seen anybody write it whatsoever:

_**We choose Sherlock** _

An odd slant on the sentiment, but one Q rather liked. Sherlock, wherever he was, would also approve wholeheartedly; the daydream of quite what Sherlock’s ego would do with his name being written across a wall was a pleasant distraction.

Q had been promoted. Despite only having an OWL in the subject, Q found himself teaching astronomy. It was not a massive leap – astronomy and arithmancy were two subjects that went fairly hand-in-hand insofar as disciplines went – but it still required an awfully large amount of reading-up.

Ironically, it still constituted less work than teaching assistant had, and he didn’t have to share lessons with Silva or Moriarty any longer. Both were clearly unamused, but to be quite frank, Q didn’t care an enormous amount.

“Professor Bond!” Ginny exclaimed, when Q walked into their classroom; impressively, a good number of students had actually turned up to the class, despite the ostensible lack of teacher. “Are you…?”

“Yes, Miss Weasley, I am,” Q completed, before she could get overexcited. “Can I have a member of each House return to your common rooms, now, and retrieve your errant classmates. Please return within ten minutes, refer any queries on your being out of class to me, please.”

Four duly vanished, and Q turned to the rest of the class. “Good morning all,” he said politely, quietly. “If you could indicate for me how far you have progressed with Professor Sinestra, I will continue from that point onwards.”

“Identification of Saturn,” a boy named Johnson told him; Q thanked him – he had been a nightmarishly inept Transfigurist in Q’s first year teaching, but a sweet boy all the same – and promptly referred them into the correct places in their textbooks.

Later that evening, sat in a crumpled collection of limbs on his camp bed, Q was greeted by a rather frightened-looking House Elf. “Hello,” Q offered, his voice something of a query; House Elves had been lying exceptionally low since the beginning of term, in the light of new management. “Can I help?”

The elf’s eyes widened. “Master should not be offering help to a _House Elf_ ,” she said breathlessly, trembling, tennis ball eyes astonishingly wide. “Master Bond, I wanted to bring… I should not, but I must…”

“Breathe,” Q advised gently, bending to her level, kind and as non-confrontational as he could manage. “It’s alright. What did you bring?”

The elf glanced around, reached into her grubby uniform, and pulled out a sheaf of papers, bound tightly together with an elastic band. She all but threw them at Q’s feet and, eyes popping with terror, clicked her fingers; she vanished with a loud _crack_ , and Q managed to hide the papers a heartbeat before Silva entered the room.

Q knew Silva must have heard the noise; he said nothing, offered no explanation. Silva smiled very slightly but asked no questions as he brushed past, running a hand through Q’s hair as he passed, stroking him as one might a pet before disappearing into the shower. Q waited until he could hear water running before he dared move.

From under his pillow, Q pulled out the papers, his heart hammering frantically in his throat.

Lesson plans, detailed information on points Q would know immediately, students to look out for and teaching details that were especially important. Aurora had left him everything in readiness. _See you at Christmas. A_

The promise of Christmas was enough to make Q’s smile feel almost entirely genuine again. He would be able to go home, see his husband, his family, find out how the Order were faring and what was actually _happening_ outside of the Hogwarts microcosm. “Thank you,” he mumbled out loud, partly for the optimistic hearing of the House Elf he had never even found out the name of for bringing him the stuff.

Q started jotting things down, listening out for the shower stopping next door; as soon as it did, Q’s papers were stashed away again, and he feigned nonchalance as Silva stepped out with a towel around his waist. “Good day, querido?” Silva asked lightly, moving to his wardrobe with Q pointedly refusing to look up.

“Fine,” Q returned noncommittally, glancing over an OWL-standard textbook to try and remember whether Pluto was still counted as a planet in the wizarding world, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was. Sherlock had been put off joining NASA by Pluto’s downgrading, after all. “You?”

“Not the most _exciting_ ,” Silva returned, with a touch of bounce in his tone. “I miss you in my classes, it is far duller.”

Q raised an eyebrow, not looking up from his textbook. “Yes,” he said, tone dripping with sarcasm. “I can imagine.”

They stayed in silence for a little while, Q scribbling intermittently. Silva changed into new robes, brushing through his hair and doing something that distinctly resembled blow-drying his hair with a few deft swipes of his wand – Q knew such spells existed, but had always been healthily wary of burning his scalp – before settling at his own desk with piles of Arithmancy homework from various students.

Q permitted himself a moment of breathtaking envy, that Silva was taking _his_ class, before deciding that he was, in fact, a grown up.

The pair worked in strangely companionable silence for a little while.

“You saved my life,” Q commented abruptly, the words surprising even to him.

Silva glanced up from his desk, brows slightly contracted, almost fascinated. “Do tell,” he asked softly.

“I fell off the broom in July, when we broke Harry out. You must have known I couldn’t be him after that, the boy has flying in his blood,” Q considered aloud, the intelligent part of his brain desperately trying to remind him what a stupid idea this was; the memory flitted in his immediate vision, Silva’s voice shouting a spell to slow his fall, enough time for Bond to pick him up again. “Did you just guess? Or what? Why save me if you didn’t know it was me? Why save me if you _did_? I always assumed your behaviour around me was opportunistic, but… I never quite understood why you had a fascination with _me_ in particular…”

Q let his voice trail off. The point had been more than amply made.

Silva was very, very silent.

Dimly, Q was aware that he had overstepped quite a large number of lines in a handful of sentences, and was not unreasonably concerned about what would come as a consequence. Q could hear blood pumping in his ears.

“Bond never told you.”

It was not a question, but a statement, and that was enough to more than pique Q’s interest. He froze for a moment, confusion prickling over his skin, expression contracting faintly. “Told me what?” Q asked, the obvious extension to the statement, given that Silva didn’t seem to be elaborating at all.

Silva, curiously, didn’t look as maliciously happy as Q was accustomed to seeing from him when giving bad news. He looked almost troubled, somewhere between angry and weirdly _upset_ , eyes not leaving Q’s. “How curious,” he mused aloud. “You and Mr Bond. He has, I suppose, ten or so more years than you?”

“Yes,” Q nodded slowly, wondering where in the hell this was likely to go.

Silva’s expression didn’t change, the staring becoming fairly intimidating. “You are surely aware that he worked once for the Ministry of Magic?” he continued, as though Q were a little slow. “Auror and Mysteries Departments?”

“Yes. He doesn’t like to talk about it much,” Q returned.

Silva’s smile finally made its anticipated return. “Once upon a time, when I was but a teenage Durmstrang graduate, I fell into work with the Ministry of Magic. Before I found teaching, of course.”

Q’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And? Let me guess, you both worked for the Ministry? Not exactly tremendous, a lot of people have worked in the Ministry. Mycroft, too, if you want to compare notes, you two must have started around the same time…”

“Shh,” Silva said softly. “Allow me to finish, no? I never knew Mycroft Holmes, but I knew Mr Bond. We were in the same department, little Q. He was 007, I was then a very different man.”

“Cut to the chase,” Q interjected, now fairly irritable, tension lacing his body into sharp angles.

“Mr Bond and I first met when I was known under a different name, most of a different face, in fact,” Silva mused. “We worked for the same department, I… left, shall we say. I know Bond’s past, and…” he tsked lightly, shaking his head with a rather contrived expression of remembrance. “… naughty, naughty Mr Bond. Should be ashamed of himself.”

Q didn’t say anything. There were extremely few things he could say. “Bond murdered Muggles,” Silva continued softly. “Executions. Those who didn’t suit the official party line, as it were… mmn.”

“And you?” Q asked, tone cold and intentionally unpleasant.

A small quirk of a smile. “I didn’t like it there much,” he murmured. “All those years, all the blood on one’s hands, it gets so _wearisome_ , you understand. I was delivered into the loving hands of those who had imagination, time, know what it _means_ to wish for an end. The Chinese Ministry are not delightful company, you understand.”

“Chinese?” Q echoed; they kept themselves to themselves within the Wizarding community, but all knew them for their de facto takeover of the Muggle world. International wizarding communities would address that little quirk at some stage, but as ever, national self-interest was of foremost importance.

“Never trust wizards with power, little Q. Our Mr Bond, alcoholic, womaniser, _murderer_ …”

“You don’t suit pettiness,” Q told Silva, with dry bravado. “Nice attempt, but seriously. James has done a lot of things, but…”

“… torture?” Silva completed, voice dancing dangerously. “Sleeping with prostitutes and watching them die,” Silva snapped his fingers emphatically, “seconds later? Using anybody to meet his ends, taking his _time_ in his executions, _enjoying_ it. I’ve only ever known dear Bella be better with Unforgiveable Curses…”

“That’s enough,” Q interjected coldly.

“It’s not enough,” Silva returned instantly, lividly. Q flinched despite himself; Silva was half-blazing with anger Q hadn’t known he held, terrifyingly raw, open. “It’s _never_ enough. How much has your dear _husband_ not told you? A license to use Unforgivable Curses. A Dark Mark by any other name, merely _sanctioned_. Curious, isn’t it, how _easy_ it is to feel quite so _moral_.”

“Stop it.”

“Is that how he justifies it?” Silva asked, voice a lower hiss. “He and I, we are the same.”

“You are nothing like James,” Q interjected, anger shading his voice blacker. “You two are nothing alike.”

“You are _naïve_ , and all because you never asked the questions, never _pushed_. All your own delicately troubled childhood, your little life. You were a curiosity to me when you arrived in Hogwarts, a beautiful curiosity, so clever, no _name_. I know what it is to exist in this world under false identities, and you intrigued me. So young. Then, _ooh_ , I find that you are with none other than Mr Bond.”

Q raised an eyebrow, letting out a short, barking laugh. “So all of this is to take an exceptionally belated revenge on James for very spurious reasons?!” he asked, with a fair degree of incredulity; Silva had been teaching at Hogwarts for about eight years before Bond joined the faculty, making their once-disputes literally over a decade old.

“James dealt rather badly with seeing Miss Lynd, hmm?” Silva mocked, lilting. “Betrayals take _time_. Before; well, Albus rather got in the way. Your appearance was _delightful_ , but make no mistake: you are not special. Simply killing you would be less amusing. Anger carves out parts of a person, and I want Bond to be _angry_. Then you will die, and he will too.”

Q rolled his eyes, unapologetically bored. “Except, again, that Bond is nothing like you,” he pointed out.

Silva didn’t smile. His expression remained quiet, somehow sad. “Bond and I are precisely alike in several important regards,” he told Q, and Q just waited for him to continue. “The most vital – some in this world know that to kill a person, to cast an Unforgivable Curse, to watch a life extinguish; it affects the core of one’s being, and places more strain than the soul can manage.”

“I know Bond…”

“You know _nothing_ ,” Silva snapped at him. “You have lived in a world of people like Mycroft Holmes. Even the Dark Lord only begins to understand, but not truly; those are the people who give orders. Myself and Mr Bond are the ones who exact those orders. They have blood on their hands, we have blood _under our fingernails_ , and our souls are torn beyond repair.”

“You’re talking about dark magic,” Q realised aloud, quietly, carefully. “This isn’t… this isn’t how James is, how…”

“… isn’t it?” Silva asked softly. “Dear, sweet Q. Attempt to understand: we are not of your world, and we are torn apart in ways you could not begin to know. I hope you never shall. The act of killing is a beautiful thing, but it takes apart fractions of you, until you are empty.”

“Is this why?”

Q was on the edge of implosion. Silva’s rambling rhetoric, all of his words and lilting voice, it meant nothing; he needed to understand, and for the first time since he had known Silva – really _known_ Silva, known what the man was capable of and learnt to truly fear him – he seemed close to knowing.

Silva still was nothing close to bright, eyes electric, intense. “All you are, Q, is cause and effect,” he explained simply. “All torn to pieces, and one begins to truly depend upon the predictable. I curse you, and you scream. I threaten, you acquiesce. I kiss you, I can see it, the growth from terror to anger to fear to acceptance to nothing. It all goes to nothing.”

“Poetic,” Q returned, words of a braver tenor than his body, hands barely contained from shaking.

Finally, the crack of a smile, an almost-surprised laugh. “And _that_ , that is why I adore you, why Mr Bond adores you – you are entirely predictable, but you are sharp, you are clever, and you remain interesting. A balance few manage. I fear I bored my tormentors far too early. I wonder.”

Q would never find out what he wondered. Frankly, Q was far from certain that he would ever fully understand quite what Silva was saying, quite why, whether all the reasons would ever slot into a neat order that would make any of it make sense.

It was more than enough to know that Silva would not stop, nor did he wish to. He would continue until there was nothing left, and a shell of himself could be shown to somebody he had once loved, and there would not be enough of Q left to care.

Hogwarts was locked down. Q could go nowhere

But he was _damned_ if he was going to remain predictable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and thank you immensely to those who have been dropping into my consultingwriters tumblr to encourage me to update ;) you guys are world wonders, and believe me, your words are immensely important to me.
> 
> My love, and be safe my dears. Jen.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience, as ever, and I hope you continue to enjoy. Jen.

It became difficult to think about Bond much. Silva’s words lingered heavily on Q’s conscience, in the back of his mind, loud and oppressive; Bond had aspects of his past that Q could not begin to understand, and he could not pretend to any more. Q had always trusted him, and that had always been enough.

Bond’s past kept returning. Again and again, Q was faced with questions, and Bond had never given him enough answers. Without him there, without any way of talking or making sense of it all, Q could not begin to try and make sense of it.

There were other, more important considerations.

Ginny Weasley, and a handful of others, attempted to steal the Sword of Gryffindor from Snape’s office.

It was a suicidal thing to attempt, especially as it was only being done for strange emblematic reasons; it had been bequeathed to Harry Potter, and so they felt it right to liberate the thing.

Snape had been surprisingly kind about it, initially. Ginny, Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood were caught in the midst of his office; he gave them detentions, and decided they would be sent into the Forest with Hagrid. Once, it would have been a horrible detention – the Forest was quite rightly feared by students and staff alike – but with Hagrid, and half the creatures subdued by the new regimes, it stood to be extremely kind as far as punishments went.

Jim Moriarty noticed that fact, and pouted.

It did not change their punishment; merely, the Dark members of staff decided to make the lives of any dissenters a living hell. The three children were held up as examples, and Q was rapidly going past the point of being able to do much.

Q knew his own sanity was starting to slide. Raoul was constant, a presence that Q could not escape from day or night, all of Q’s usual safe spaces occupied by the darker knowledge of a man he could not escape. Moriarty wanted information, wanted _Sherlock_ , and Q remained in the centre of everybody’s machinations, everybody seeking him out and waiting for the snapping point.

Little things seemed to be a mainstay. Minerva making tea, Filius inviting him for cake, all the little things that made days bearable. Astronomy was hard work, but Q enjoyed it, and nights spent stargazing meant time away from Silva’s rooms and more time staring up at the stars, the same sky Bond was under, his siblings, the Order. The people who were fighting in a very different way to Q.

“Jim, leave off,” Q told him tiredly – the Irishman was occupied slowly burning everything in Luna’s bag, her homework, her books – and waved his wand briefly, cutting him off, restoring what he could of Luna’s work. “Miss Lovegood, go to Professor Flitwick’s office, tell him I sent you.”

Luna glanced between Q and Moriarty with transparent disbelief, probably at Q’s stupidity – he wholeheartedly agreed that he was probably insane – but mercifully didn’t linger, getting away before Jim could get angry.

“I was having _fun_ ,” Moriary hissed.

Q raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I gathered that,” he returned drily.

Moriarty’s expression was playful, manic, black eyes fathomless. “How’s your big brother?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Q told him expressionlessly. “How’s a life of tormenting children?”

 _“Delightful_ ,” Moriarty returned, in a voice that was all sex and want and enjoyment, making Q’s stomach turn slightly; nobody could quite repel him like James Moriarty, the sinuous motions of his body as he slid closer, eloquent fingers bopping Q’s nose playfully. “You’re not very careful, are you? We all _know_. We’re watching.”

Q stalked away, Jim’s eyes heavy on his spine, the pressure of a million pairs of eyes, all waiting for him to do _something_ , and Q didn’t even fully know what.

The next day, Q found a blank sheet of paper on his desk. A series of spells finally revealed a concealed copy of The Quibbler, which was more than enough to make Q’s mood soar; they believed Harry was alive, was denouncing the actions of the world outside.

The Obituaries section spanned a double page spread. Q read it through with ferocious intensity, names he half-recognised, many he did not. It was one of the most dangerous pieces of paper Q had probably ever held.

The Daily Prophet, meanwhile, was simply garbage. Propaganda at best, and outright lies at worst; Sherlock was denounced as the ‘second greatest danger to wizards in our time’ which Q found frankly hilarious, various members of the Order were intermittently cited as dangerous or deluded, and Muggle-born harbourers were being killed on the spot.

The Prophet did not say the last. Silva, however, was fairly unrepentant about it; he knew, like all truly Dark wizards, that the Order was harbouring Muggle-borns. Before losing contact, Q knew of at least three dozen Muggle-borns that had found some forms of shelter with or through the Order. Bond had mentioned that they were trying to get Muggle-borns out of the country, finding shelter elsewhere in Europe.

They were not the only ones, and anybody caught was executed.

“No need to look quite so aggrieved,” Silva purred at him. “Our Mr Bond did the same, once. Tracked down those who did not suit the ideal du jour, as it were…”

Q just rolled over, and refused to listen any further.

It was early December – it all seemed to have happened too fast for Q’s head to keep up with, and yet somehow impossibly slow – when Q nearly lost his mind altogether. Quite possibly would have done, had it not been for incredible fortune, and several people risking their safeties.

Poppy had been in and around the Hospital Wing when Q turned up for his usual pain potions – had gone back onto them full time, with stress and exhaustion making everything fire in technicolour – and along with them, Q had been handed a minute folded message.

“ _Calendo_.”

Q watched the words form in an abandoned classroom, knew the writing, breathing catching in his throat and unable to stop his legs from going from under him, leaving him crumpled against the wall of an empty classroom with knuckles white on an impossibly fragile square of paper.

_My Q,_

_You will be home soon, we are doing all we can. The Order is still going strong, we are fighting. Your brothers are safe and well, as are we all. Have faith in Harry Potter, and stay strong, particularly now – I know it’s hard, and I am so sorry. I love you, and whatever happens, I will still love you, and I will still be forever entirely, and completely, yours. Be safe._

_JB_.

At which point, Q started to cry. Sobs that seemed to rack his body, turning it inside out with sheer force, breathing erratically, dizzy and frantic and falling apart while Bond’s words, the half-remembered smell of his skin and the warmth of his hand, and it felt like a painfully long time ago now.

Q had finally reached the stage where he just wanted to go home. Sod Hogwarts and students and fighting, and just go home, sleep in a warm bed with his husband’s arms around him, and not have to think any more. It was getting difficult to even know if he was doing good any more; the school was imbalanced, they needed more people, with Aurora gone and so many Dark wizards, it was too much.

His mouth opened in a silent parody of a scream, every muscle wrenchingly tight, riding it out while he could.

The tears didn’t stop for a long while, until Q was tapped out, all the tears he couldn’t really indulge in elsewhere. The paper was burnt into a quiet and sad pile of ash, the words indented in Q’s memory regardless.

Eventually Q stood, feeling a little better. Soon. He would be able to go home soon.

The afternoon continued to pass, Bond’s words lingering.

The one thing Q had always feared most came true.

The Ministry had issued a collection of various new pieces of legislation throughout the last few months; the Muggle-born register, the half-breed registers, various strictures on half-breed magic usages. Condemnation of all things seen as ‘deviant’, which was a word that stuck at the edges of Q’s mind and needled unpleasantly from time to time; Bond was a few years older, still remembered a world where he and Q would never have been accepted.

Umbridge had been one to vocally condemn Bond and Q’s relationship. The Ministry made no secret of the fact that it considered a nuclear family – described in official pink pamphlets with love hearts spattered around the borders – as a mother, a father, and two children. Close grandparents, respectful and obedient children, deferential wives. A return, in short, to modes of living that the wizarding and even Muggle worlds had long-since been moving away from.

**_Magical Marriage Law Amendments_ **

Preserving values, protecting wizards.

Not the worst slogan the Ministry had come up with in recent days, and pitched just well enough to somehow make it seem less horrifying: marriages conducted by ‘non-sanctioned officials’, any unions that were considered ‘immoral’ or ‘against common values’ were dissolved.

Intermarriage between Muggles, Muggle-borns or Half-bloods had been, as of that morning dissolved. Almost as a postscript, the Amendment breezily announced that any ‘marriages’ – inverted commas and all – between people of the same sex were considered invalid.

In a single piece of paper, Q’s marriage had ended.

Q was frighteningly still, eyes scanning loosely over the page again and again as though it would change the contents, the ink shifting to new positions somehow, making it no longer real.

Remus and Tonks were presumably in a similar state – another line denounced werewolves, unsurprisingly – but they were _together_ , they could defiantly ignore some ridiculous Ministry strictures and hold on to one another, while Tonks’s belly grew larger with the child Q had almost forgotten about.

“They can stuff it,” Pomona growled, wielding a pair of secateurs like a lethal weapon at the dinner table; Q simply could not face going anywhere near Silva, was taking refuge amongst other staff members for as long as he could. “My ex-husband would have thrown a fit if he’d known about all this rubbish, wizarding blood _evolves_ , we all evolve…”

“Don’t want to be evolving in the _wrong way_ though, do we?” Moriarty said loudly, chucking himself into a chair and reaching for food with disturbing joy. Even the Carrows seemed to have some forms of solemnity about some aspects of Hogwarts, Silva was content and calm, but Moriary _giggled_.

Q couldn’t quite contain himself: “Of course, it’s simple to find some form of common enemy,” he said drily, “but I am a little surprised that the Ministry is _so_ concerned with ‘sexual deviants’ that they don’t want to curtail the actions of people who are far more dangerous.”

Moriarty didn’t drop eye contact for a second. “I wonder who you might be referring to,” he said softly, sweetly. “But tsk, little Holmes, I would be far nicer to important people.”

“’Important’ is an amusing word for yourself,” Q parried; Pomona shot him a look, one Q duly ignored.

Moriarty expression had darkened once again, all hell burning behind his eyes. “It isn’t just me I’d be concerned about,” he murmured, before abruptly grinning again, breaking off to glance around the table. “Cake. I need cake. Is there cake?”

By the time Moriarty had turned back, Q had disappeared.

“Professor?”

Q glanced up; Ginny was watching him, brows contracted with worry. “I’m fine,” Q said on reflex, Ginny’s expression telling him quite firmly that he was not even slightly convincing. “Really. Shouldn’t you be somewhere?”

“Come with me,” she said instead.

Ginny had been one of Q’s students when he had started the Defence Against the Dark Arts group, the private one throughout Umbridge’s time as teacher, the year Bond had been supplanted. Q had always been very fond of her; she had a life and confidence and bravery that defied most people Q had ever known.

Q felt very, very young. “I can’t,” he told her quietly, unable to help _wishing_ it could be different, his voice almost pleading in a way he hated himself for, but his snapping point was inches from the end of his fingertips and he needed to go back to Silva’s rooms, he couldn’t even keep his own space to grieve.

“I know where we can get tea,” Ginny told him, with a small smile. “Proper Earl Grey. There are a few of us, we’re getting together just… detention students, people who need some space. Please.”

Ginny was sixteen, Q considered. He himself would be twenty-three next year, and frankly, whoever arbitrarily said eighteen or twenty-one or sixteen or _whatever_ constituted adulthood had evidently never tried being an adult because _fuck_ , Q was not an independent grown-up in this moment.

In this moment, Q needed somebody to let him not be an adult.

“Okay,” he nodded.

“We’ll keep an eye out,” one of the portraits told him, from the wall; Q glanced to the voice, a minute little witch who smiled at him encouragingly. “Go on.”

Ginny nodded her gratitude, and the witch curtsied back elegantly. “Follow me,” she told him, voice low, and Q followed her down the corridor, slipping through a secret passage behind the tapestry of Mordred the Elder, winding up by a painting of fruit.

Q watched, unable to stop a small smile as Ginny tickled the fruit; the portrait swung open, and Q followed Ginny inside, winding up in what could only be the Hogwarts kitchens, and one of the only places Q had never been in the castle.

All the House Elves flocked, and Q was faced with scones and tea and cream and he wanted to cry again, but he had done quite enough of that for one day, and so he looked around at the other students instead. “Hello,” he said quietly.

Neville grinned. “Evening, Professor,” he said brightly, biting into a large sandwich, apparently ignoring the large black eye he’d acquired at some stage.

Luna was also there, looking thin and a little bit fragile; she shuffled closer to Q, placed a hand on his leg and ignored the slight flinch at the contact, her touch gentle and somehow unobtrusive.

The lines between teacher and student had been well and truly destroyed. Q knew most of them through their secret lessons, through the Order and the strange lives they had been trying to lead, and this was just somehow a natural extension. “How many people know about this?” he asked quietly.

“We’ve got ways of communicating,” Neville told him, through a mouthful. “Couple of others should be here tonight. Kreacher is usually the one to give the all-clear, ‘pparently Harry and the others were nice to him.”

“Master Potter is our greatest hope,” piped up a voice by Q’s feet; Q glanced down, and smiled at the House Elf who was almost-defiantly staring up at him.

Q nodded. “I know,” he said simply. “I had… I had word, and Harry is believed to be alive. I don’t know any more than that, but it’s a start.”

The students all nodded, glancing up en masse as there was noise from the portrait hole. A moment later, Michael Corner, Parvati Patil and Ernie Macmillan all turned up. The latter immediately drew his wand upon seeing Q; he was wearing his fear more openly than the others, something that made Neville roll his eyes. “Put it away, it’s Professor Bond,” he chastised.

The name made something violently wrench in Q’s body, in his throat: technically, he was no longer Professor Bond.

“ _Love is a funny form of magic. Wizarding laws cannot govern it. It matters very little whether they think I should perform the ceremony or not; love binds people in ways no Wizard or Muggle alike could hope to understand,_ ” Luna recited, her voice perfectly musical. “That’s what Professor Dumbledore said.”

Q’s expression contracted slightly; he remembered that moment. His and Bond’s wedding reception, Dumbledore’s smile so warm and his eyes twinkling, somehow knowing that Q was worried and saying all of the right things. He had always been able to do that.

Abruptly, Q was broken out of his musings. “Why do you drink this stuff?!” Michael spluttered, having taken a sip of Q’s tea. “It’s _horrible_.”

Q snorted, and drank his own tea, meeting Ginny’s gaze from the other side of the room – she was busy devouring a cream bun with mad enthusiasm – and was met with a wink.

“Thank you,” he mouthed; Ginny rolled her eyes, and threw another bun at his head, letting him snag it out of the air, laughing for the first time in what felt like forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts, your ideas, your responses, make my soul soar. Thank you for reading. Jen.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings. Always warnings. Although if you've got this far you're probably fairly conversant... anyway. Thank you kindly, those who are staying with this series! Jen.

Christmas was coming.

Q was getting through it very wearily. December was incredibly cold, and Christmas wasn’t really happening; instead, there was just a constant term, ticking away, work and tiredness and it never seemed to end any more.

The staff and students were rallying together, however. Q started to find small presents left on his desk, only small things. After another couple of evenings with students in the kitchens, Q wound up confessing that most of his possessions had been destroyed or confiscated by the staff, including his sugar quill.

Everybody knew about Q’s Everlasting Sugar Quill. He had got the thing when he first started at Hogwarts, and had always absentmindedly sucked on it during lessons. It was something of a running student joke.

Throughout December, sugar quills started appearing. Another and another and another, so much so that Q was fairly sure the entire school must have heard about the quills; Q grinned, collecting them in his desk drawer, using them with something approaching subordination whenever he was around the Dark staff members.

Silva confiscated them. Q just used another.

With the weather quite so dark, the pervasive atmosphere, it seemed inevitable that students and staff alike were beginning to crack around the edges. A second-year Hufflepuff, Jamie Adams, was the first one Q was party to; during one of the night-time Astronomy classes in the tower, the exhausted boy had a severe panic attack. Like dominos, the rest of the class started to shatter around the edges, terrified and frantic classmates crowding around, girls screaming, bursting into tears.

It was an incredibly difficult class. Q – who was by this stage more tired than he knew he could be, after several midnight classes in a row and very little sleep elsewhere – found himself calling for quiet with palpable desperation.

“Jamie, _Jamie_ ,” one of the girls was calling, in floods of tears, trying to get to her friend. For a long moment, Q couldn’t work out why nobody was allowing her close.

She was a Slytherin.

Q saw red. “That,” he snapped, “is _utterly_ unacceptable. All of you, stand back, _now_ , and stay silent. You three,” he continued, looking to those holding Adams. “Is he alright?”

“Yes, Professor,” one of them replied quietly, trembling, while Adams composed himself, by now openly crying into a friend’s shirt with all self-consciousness entirely dissolved. “Professor…”

“Adams, is Miss Williams a friend of yours?” Q asked gently, the boy letting out a small sound at her name.

Q watched, waited, as he let out a sharp sob and nodded. “He’s, he was, s’my friend,” the girl was sobbing, being supported by her fellow Slytherins, the boys tight-jawed and livid, the girls trying to soothe her. “Jamie, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_.”

“Slytherins aren’t like other Houses, they…”

“If you continue that sentence, I can assure you, I will be placing you in detention,” Q shot outwards; he didn’t see who had spoken, but it didn’t matter, they were all doing it. “Our Houses make no difference to who we are, they do _not_ make somebody intrinsically evil, and I am _disgusted_ by your behaviour. All of you. You should be ashamed of yourselves. In times like this, we _cannot_ afford pettiness or childishness. People are _dying_.”

Those around looked ashamed of themselves, certainly, but Q was not convinced they would change much. Thirteen-year-olds hitting puberty were hard enough as it was, without everything else going on. “Tash?” Jamie managed, body still shaking, half out of control.

Tash – the Slytherin girl – took her cue to go to him, cupping his face carefully, smiling despite her tears and making herself calm down for his sake. Another Hufflepuff reached out to her, just a simple touch, letting her know she was accepted.

Q breathed erratically, and dismissed the rest of the class, aware that he needed to speak to other staff members before students started to truly struggle under the pressure. Mental health was badly managed in Hogwarts as it was; with Dumbledore gone, the atmosphere dangerously oppressive, Q could sense impending problems.

It was a pity; Q actually loved teaching Astronomy, as a subject. In another year, it would have been really enjoyable. “Which has been your favourite?” Slughorn asked him amiably at dinner, handing Q the potatoes with a knowing expression that said he needed to eat more. “Of the subjects you’ve taught – you’ve done more than all of us, haven’t you?”

“Arithmancy, obviously,” Q replied without any hesitation, ignoring the heaviness of Moriarty’s gaze. “Transfiguration was a lot of fun, sorry Minerva…”

“… yes, the students adored you, too,” Minerva pointed out, with only a touch of jealousy. “They still have fond butterfly-related memories.”

“Don’t we all,” Moriarty supplemented, with dangerous quiet, everybody abruptly remembering the fight only six months previously in the Astronomy tower where Q spent half his days.

Then, Q had been trying to avoid Moriarty killing him outright. With some reflection, it was difficult to tell if anything had actually changed. Q reckoned it probably hadn’t. “Anyway,” he said pointedly, Moriarty’s head tilted, watching him with silent interest. “That was very early on…”

“Yes, and they remember,” Minerva smiled, ignoring Moriarty too, encouragingly enough. “I have to say, I didn’t enjoy teaching History of Magic much…”

Q snorted. “Well, Mycroft was made for that subject,” he pointed out; he found it hilarious, then as now, that Mycroft had wanted to teach such drivel. “Is Binns ever coming back, by the way?”

“I don’t think he wants to,” Poppy told him, with a slight headshake, glancing out towards the Carrows who remained stalking the Hall. “Ah, well. I miss him, actually, he was rather lovely for a man who’s been dead for so long…”

“Bor-ing,” Moriarty singsonged, apparently rather enjoying being able to join in a conversation that was not his, and mock. “He wouldn’t be _allowed_ back here, not exactly the teaching style we’re looking for.”

Poppy let out a loud, disparaging sound. “Yes, for a man brought up in an era where capital punishment was _normal_ , even he finds your lot repulsive…”

Moriarty moved with incredible quickness, snagged halfway by Q’s arm before he could deliver a hit to Poppy’s face. “Don’t even think about it,” Q told him coldly, sharply before Moriarty merrily punched him in the stomach.

Q gasped for breath, and straightened again. “Ow,” he mumbled, as the Hall quieted, looking up at the source of drama, Jim’s bright eyes and Q’s defiance. There was always something to watch, but it was certainly rarer that there were infractions on the staff table. “Can we not? I just don’t like people hitting women.”

“Bless you, Q, but I’m fine,” Poppy told them, her brightness a little bit forced, but appreciated all the same. “Let’s all calm down. We do not need this to get out of hand, we’re all tired, it’s nearly the end of term.”

That was a grim understatement; everybody was exhausted, Poppy included. She had been run off her feet as compared to any other year she’d ever been at the school, and her calm was laudable. That was Poppy, though, scary and pragmatic and unflappable.

“Yes, Professor _Q_ ,” Jim purred. “Let’s all keep calm. Very calm. _So_ calm.”

Q’s expression remained studiously impassive. “It’s still Bond,” he told Moriarty softly, leaning in towards him, pointedly unafraid.

Moriarty just looked vaguely amused. “I’d take the ring off if I were you, you don’t want to confuse impressionable children now, do you? And do bear in mind that people may get, _upset_ , if you don’t take the ring off.”

“Touch my ring, and I’ll jinx you from here to Cornwall and back,” Q promised.

Moriarty grinned, all teeth.

“That’s quite enough. Q, did you hear about the potential for Pluto being reinstated as a planet in the Muggle world…?”

“… Viva la Pluto,” Moriarty commented ironically, eyes not leaving Q, who – by now – just wanted to punch the man. “How _is_ your big brother, by the way?”

“Which one?” Q returned, with dark sarcasm.

Jim’s eyes near enough popped. “ _Ooh_ , now, either one will do!”

“Are we really doing this now?!” Minerva asked, with angry disbelief, shooting Q a glance that asked him to calm down and shut up before things escalated. “ _Leave it_ , Moriarty, you know there’s nothing to be gained here.”

“Now, you see, there we disagree.”

Q had to remain calm. He knew that. Getting angry, right now, would border on suicidal. It was _incredibly_ difficult to stay calm, though, with everything going on and Moriarty just had the spectacular ability to push every single one of Q’s buttons. “Well I fucking _bet_ you disagree.”

“Point and example…”

“ _Q_.”

Q bit his tongue, almost literally, grinding his teeth so hard he thought he would probably break something. “I’m going,” he managed to say, fists incredibly tight.

Jim waved him goodbye, fingers waggling, and Q got the hell away as fast as he could.

Outside, it was dark and painfully cold, windows showing cracks of frost, skating along to the frame. “Professor Bond?”

Q turned, locating Tobin an instant later. “Hello,” he smiled; Tobin was still in a suit, still looked desperately sad, but Q couldn’t help a little smirk as he noticed that the boy was still wearing heels. “How are things?”

“Not great,” Tobin admitted. “They, erm… they burnt my portrait a bit, I was trying to help Rose Lightman, you know, the dark-haired girl… after the news about, about marriage and things, and she was upset, I said it didn’t matter. She isn’t sure. ‘bout anything, I mean, she isn’t… doesn’t feel like a girl or a boy and likes a girl, but that’s the only girl she’s liked, so she doesn’t know and she was scared.”

“What happened?” Q asked slowly, a little bit dangerously.

Tobin’s brow creased inwards. “They caught me. Us. I tried, I did, Snape took Rose but the Carrows, they attacked my painting, and I’m… I don’t have anything more to lose, I don’t think, so…”

“ _Tobin_.”

“Call me Tabitha.”

Q was rendered speechless for a moment or two. Honestly, genuinely speechless. “Sorry, say that again?”

“I don’t care if I can’t dress right. I’m a girl. I’ve always been a girl. So call me Tabitha.”

“Are you sure about this?”

Tobin – Tabitha – looked at Q with a type of steely and terrified determination that Q half-recognised. “I’m older than you, don’t patronise me,” he – _she_ – snapped, before blushing slightly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to get angry, I just… with everything that’s happening…”

“I know,” Q intervened gently, before Tabitha continued. “I really do. I’m just worried about you. This isn’t a great time, with everything going on, you could get… they already destroyed your painting. If any of them find out…”

“Life is too short,” Tabitha told him defiantly, making Q grin despite himself. “I’m not wearing dresses and stuff, I’m not being _obvious_ , but for me and everything, all of it, for _me_ , I want it.”

Q couldn’t deny that he was extremely impressed. “Alright then, Tabitha – good on you. I’m here if you need to talk, as always. I just wish I could do more, really…”

Tabitha shrugged. “Sorry for bringing it up, but I don’t think I’m the one who needs help,” she pointed out apologetically. “Everybody knows, Q. We’re all worried about you, you’re not trying to get help, you’re not talking to anybody about it, Beth was crying when I talked to her about it…”

Q remembered Beth – the portrait outside his and Bond’s rooms – with stupid fondness; she had been such a wonderfully mothering figure, supportive and non-judgemental, righteously furious after Q’s rooms had been destroyed. Q hadn’t realised how much he had missed her.

“… and teachers too, everyone’s worried, Professor Silva…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Q said quickly, firmly. The fact that the man was bloody omnipresent was too much, far too much for Q to cope with, and not discussing the obvious was Q’s only defence of his almost-expired sanity. “I need to go, Tob- sorry, Tabitha – so, I’ll talk to you later, yes? Let me know if anything else happens with students, yes?”

Tabitha watched him with palpable sadness. “You need to talk to somebody,” she told him, tone very slightly pleading. “You’re always so lovely to everybody. We can help. If you want, I mean…”

“… thank you,” Q interjected, his smile not quite reaching his eyes as he bid a painting goodbye, and headed towards Silva’s rooms.

Later Q was cross-legged on the bed, sorting through papers. Silva didn’t let him use the desk, an annoyance that Q had grown rather used to. “There you are, clever boy,” Silva said delightedly, as he spotted his younger roommate.

A response was restrained with some difficulty, and Q remained carefully still as Silva moved closer to sit on the bed, his body crossing into Q’s space and staying there, sliding a hand around Q’s back. “Hello,” Q replied neutrally, schooling himself to remain impassive.

Merlin, he was too tired for this. “Now,” Silva murmured, close to the shell of his ear, an almost-sensual hum. “Now, _now_. We need to talk about Christmas.”

Q moved away carefully, extricating himself from Silva’s immediate vicinity, finding his own personal space again. “What about it?” he asked, a little edgily; Q shuffled himself back, Silva pursuing, pulling him back in again so their limbs crossed, Q near enough sat in Silva’s lap.

Silva raised an eyebrow, and Q stayed extremely still, willing his heartbeat to stop hammering quite so obviously. “I was thinking that maybe, _maybe_ , you might like to stay in Hogwarts,” he told Q, holding Q’s gaze firmly, his voice only slightly hinting at a choice in the matter.

“Absolutely not,” Q returned flatly, and didn’t have even a slight problem in being emphatic about it. “I’m doing everything you want me to and then some. You give me Christmas out of here.”

The statements were flat and honest, and Q meant it: there was no way he would let Silva keep him over Christmas. He was going to go home, he _had_ to go home. “A pity,” Silva murmured. “I suppose… well. I’ll have to make the most of you while you’re here, hmm?”

Q closed his eyes, jaw so tight the skin felt on the verge of splitting, as Silva’s breath tickled his throat, lips brushing over arteries; he pushed his thoughts to one side, letting his mind hum, reduced to the feel of heat, the rhythmic gasps of breath in his ear, eventual silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts, your comments, are always impossibly welcome. Jen.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise to have more regular updates from hereon in, it's just been so busy recently <3 please forgive me, and thank you as ever to those sticking with me :D Jen.

The entirety of Hogwarts was guarded so closely, too closely, and Q knew he was never going to get out. Silva had made that entirely clear.

Q had no options but to try and break out with the students. All of them would be tied into coming back the next term after Ministry legislation – with compulsory attendance at Hogwarts, the only other option was to have whole families on the run if they wanted their children from the school – and it meant that there was a way out.

The train itself had been coated in Anti-Disapparation spells, the idea clearly to keep an eye on students under Hogwarts jurisdiction all the way to King’s Cross. Q only needed to get on board, and somehow get off again, which mostly required help from students.

“Obviously,” Ginny said with an eyeroll, while Neville nodded his concurrence. “We can definitely get you there, we just need cloaks and some Disillusionment charms… can’t hurt to try.”

Q only packed a handful of things into a fairly small bag. Mostly, he just wanted to get out, as fast he could. For all the good he had done – and he _had_ helped, he _knew_ he had helped, even if only one student – he needed to get out, before he completely lost his mind.

It turned out to be surprisingly easy to get onto the Hogwarts Express. Seamus Finnigan and Luna distracted the Carrows against Q’s advice but to great success, Nearly Headless Nick managed to get Snape tied up dealing with Peeves in a truly inspired piece of manipulation, and Silva was dispatched with his office utterly trashed by other Order members who escaped through a nearby portrait who harboured them and gave them safe passage out to the Entrance Hall before Silva could work out who they were.

In the meantime, Q was dressed up some student regalia, and between disguising charms to practically rework his face – and made him a very questionable shade of blond – and Disillusionment charms, he was inconspicuous as he headed trainwards with the rest of the students.

Moriarty was by the train, watching the students mill. For the shortest of moments, Q could have sworn his eyes lingered.

There was nothing, no movement or recognition, and Q moved without a break in step and let his heartbeat hammer almost painfully in his throat.

Q wound up sitting with various DA members, trying to disappear as best he could. He was _so close_ , and the train pulled out without any problems. Q couldn’t quite believe it.

“… and mum should be cooking, are you staying with us over Christmas?” Ginny was asking, Q not particularly engaged in the conversation, the simple relief at no longer being in the perimeter of Hogwarts.

Q blinked, glanced around to her. “Not actually sure,” he said with a slight shrug. “Haven’t spoken to your mum in a while, but I don’t think she’ll mind much. You’re all going home, yes?”

“Daddy’s coming to get me from the station,” Luna sighed, her voice gentle as ever. “It’s just the right time of year for Freshwater Plimpies, I can go fishing… Ginny, you should come, I think you’d like it…”

As ever, Q just found her delightful to be around; Luna was just odd enough to be extremely welcome, given that her life view seemed to somehow work independently of her surroundings. Fishing, for example. Q had honestly not been able to even start imagining that he would be even vaguely able to go fishing, leave the house, anything even close.

It was so _cold_ nowadays.

The windows had grown dark grey, oppressively so, the rain hammering onto the train as it ground to an abrupt halt. 

The entire carriage shuddered, Ginny nearly thrown out of her seat by the shock of it.

Q was on his feet along with everybody else in the compartment, wand in hand, and the silence was absolute. 

The door slid open, a rotted hand creeping around the edges, and Q could hear his own sobs echoing back in counterpoint with Silva’s voice, and a very distant part of Q’s sanity was aware that given his recent circumstances his Patronus was never going to form.

Behind the Dementor, a silvery glow coated the two masked figures who were heading into the compartment. “Come quietly, and nobody needs to get hurt,” one of them said, over the rising pitch of Q’s imminent panic attack.

Not the most promising start. Q threw out a very misaimed jinx, at about the same time that he realised he was hyperventilating _clever boy, be good for me, won’t you?_ and was finding it very difficult to keep track of what was happening, breath harsh and sharp _there we are, not that difficult, no?_ and body straining at the edges _no, no_ and vision blackening inwards from the corners.

The welcome warmth, quiet, hit: somebody else’s Patronus was shielding him, a rabbit lolloping contentedly inches from his nose, coincidently the moment Q discovered his knees had gone from under him at some stage and Silva’s voice wouldn’t go away.

“ _Leave her_ ,” Cho Chang was yelling, and Q gained enough control of himself to cast a Patronus of his own, his swan laughably enormous in the small space and along with the rabbit, more than enough to get the Dementor out of the way.

Q could breathe, jaw clenched tightly, knuckles white around his wand.

The two Death Eaters remained, down to one, a moment later; Ginny’s hex sent one of them stumbling back, grabbing at his face, collapsing as Q shot a Stunner at his chest. “Get away,” Q hissed lividly, heartbeat still far too fast. “ _Out_.”

Behind him, the window shattered. Q, and the rest, were showered in broken glass; Q felt the force of it slice through skin, the shock of the noise and abrupt pain enough to give the Death Eater a moment’s advantage. He revived his companion while Q wasted a valuable moment trying to establish that the students were alright, and in a heartbeat, Cho and Neville were tied up, Cho Immobilised, and in the interim, the Patronuses had gone.

Q tried frantically to create another one _buenos noches_ and managed, but his swan was definitely on the translucent side of opaque and the voices kept on creeping through. “What do you want?”

“You and Lovegood,” the first Death Eater grunted.

They were going to take him back. Silva was taking him back. Q had _known_ it was too much to hope for. The confusing factor was Luna, but given how the Quibbler had been doing, he supposed it made sense.

For a few hours, Q had honestly believed he was out. He was damned if he was going to let them take him back, and certainly not Luna, and even as his wand flew out of his grip Q started to fight.

Bond had taught him Muggle fighting, along with duelling, mostly because it was fun and usually wound up in heated adrenaline-fuelled sex. This would not, but he hoped very hard it would be enough to inflict some harm and get both himself and Luna out; they had an exceptionally large audience now – every single compartment on the train seemed to be piling out to see what all the fuss was about – and Q could only assume that was the point. Simple scare tactics. Drag people off the Hogwarts Express in the most dramatic way possible to terrify other students out of doing anything wrong.

Q managed to punch one of the Death Eaters in the chest, which achieved very little, and a kick came very close to hitting Luna so he stopped bothering with that; the voices were back, the Dementor crowding in closer, so _cold_ , and the moment they were close to the carriage door Q was dispatched with a Stunner to the temple.

-

Q woke up to the very odd sensation of the darkness being absolute: regardless of whether he opened his eyes or not, the pervasive blackness remained, and Q’s eyes were stubbornly refusing to adjust. Not to mention that his glasses were gone.

“Q?”

Vaguely, Q remembered being on the Hogwarts Express. After that stage, things started to make considerably more sense. Ish.

There was a very severe pain in Q’s temple. “Hello?” Q mumbled, trying to turn onto his side; the pain lanced through his head, and he retched violently. “ _Ow_. Okay. Ow. The _fuck’s_ going on?”

“You know a lot of swearwords,” a voice replied, very drily, a little bit tremulously. “You’re in Malfoy Manor.”

Q tried to sit up, and gave up on that idea very quickly indeed. “Draco?” he asked instead, very confused, thoughts wading through treacle. “What’s… my _head_. Why’s it so dark?!”

“We’re locked in the cellar,” another voice explained; Q felt a hand on his arm, flinched violently, yelped as his head started spinning unpleasantly again. “Professor? Professor, it’s alright, it’s just me.”

“Luna. And Draco. I don’t… don’t understand…”

“Mr Ollivander is here too,” Luna told him, sounding remarkably bright about it all. “Apparently we’re hostages.”

“I’m not,” Draco supplemented, sounding rather like he would prefer being a hostage to being whatever-he-was. A status he chose not to expand on, and that Q didn’t care too much about in that precise moment.

“Hostages?!”

Luna gently probed his forehead, tutting slightly under her breath in a way that would have been maternal had she seemed a little older. “They’re blackmailing everybody who loves you, so you’re the most important,” she said bluntly. “Daddy’s been publishing unpopular things. I think they waited until the end of term so they could prove a point to everybody else.”

“Yep, sounds about right,” Q mumbled at her, trying again to abortively sit up, Luna pushing him back down in her fondly annoyed manner. “So… shit. I was going _home_.”

Q tried very hard not to let the fragility enter his voice, and was fairly sure he failed. He had been so close, so _fucking_ close. “It’ll be alright, Professor,” Luna told him, still very optimistic, a very comforting figure. “They can’t keep us here indefinitely…”

Draco let out a disparaging noise. “Something to add?” Q snapped, more harshly than he intended, temple now throbbing frustratingly.

“They’ve kept Ollivander here since June,” Malfoy retorted, bitter and angry. “I heard them talking. Old Xeno just has to do what they say, but they’re keeping you.”

“Me?” Q confirmed.

“Yeah, who else? Loony’s only important cos of her dad…”

Q ground his teeth, injecting his voice with as much anger as he could manage while lying on a cold stone floor in the cellar of a Dark mansion. “You do _not_ refer to anybody like that.”

“I can talk however I want, I’m with them, they protect me…”

“Yeah, looks like that’s going swimmingly, doesn’t it?” Q pointed out, without filtering. “I’m sorry we couldn’t protect you properly, Draco, but to be fair we didn’t lock you in your own cellar, or am I missing something here? Where are your parents?”

Draco was silent for a long moment. Luna stroked Q’s head gently, a thumb running over his temple, somehow managing to be comforting rather than excruciating. “You don’t have to be angry with us, Draco,” Luna told him gently.

“Piss off, Loony.”

Q attempted to sit up, livid, and Luna kept him down with a somehow still-gentle hand. “Insulting people does not achieve anything. Draco, I’m sorry. I am so sorry, but we tried. Please, work with us here – none of us especially want to be trapped in a cellar, correct?”

Echoing silence for a moment; Q waited, hearing tremors in Draco’s breath. “They tortured my mother,” Draco said, after a moment. “When you took me. She’s okay now, but… I didn’t ask you to take me away, I didn’t…” he broke off, swallowing audibly, jaw trembling. “They thought it was my fault. I could have been trusted by them, could have been _important_.”

“Do you really believe that?” Q asked, a little more gently.

Draco was stonily silent, which was answer enough.

The quiet gave Q a moment to abruptly realise something he’d missed: “Sorry, did you say Ollivander?” he asked, with palpable shock. “The wandmaker?”

“That would be me, dear boy,” a very fragile voice told him, making Q almost flinch with shock; he hadn’t honestly expected another person, hadn’t heard breath or movement to indicate they were there. “My a-apologies for not speaking before.”

Q turned his head as far as it would go, as if there was even the slightest chance of seeing anything. “I… well, we weren’t sure what had happened to you. It’s very good to know you’re alive, sir.”

Ollivander chuckled weakly. “I wouldn’t… call me sir,” he said sporadically, slowly, clearly struggling for breath. “And a-alive is a relative term, I should think…”

“Cogito ergo sum,” Luna told him with an underpinning edge of seriousness, as Ollivander’s voice trailed off.

Q couldn’t quite believe the girl. “Quite,” he murmured, as Ollivander once again managed a barely-present chuckle. “Mr Ollivander, why _are_ you here?” he asked, as politely as he could manage while fairly bemused by the situation.

“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named believed… I could…” Ollivander began, before breaking off, breathing growing increasingly erratic in a way Q recognised.

In the earlier stages of their relationship, Bond had suffered nightmares. Sometimes, he still did. Q would wake to the tremulous hitching of Bond’s breath, as he tried to make himself steady, body tilting into a panic of the mind and Q trying to stall it mid-motion. “Breathe, steady now,” he said instead; Luna left his side, presumably going to him, and she took over from Q’s attempts while he remained on the floor, feeling fairly nauseous.

With Luna gone, he managed to sit up, feeling rather proud of himself for it. “Anybody else in here?” he asked, a little wearily.

“No,” Draco replied, tangibly surly, and Q restrained the urge to snap again; being angry in this environment would help nobody at all, and Draco had presumably been going through quite enough without Q getting at him too.

“Is there any water anywhere?” Q asked instead, deciding on ignoring Draco for the time being. He was too highly-strung at the moment for this to end especially well. 

Luna soothed Ollivander back into calmness. “I think he’s passed out,” Luna murmured, and Q listened to her move him carefully into a better position. She let out a controlled breath, and shuffled closer to Q again. “Found water!” she exclaimed happily, blindly finding Q and sliding the jug over to him. “Are you alright, Professor?”

“I really think, under the circumstances, you can call me Q,” Q replied simply, trying to stand, feeling fairly sick once again. He didn’t fail to notice how Luna moved with him, trying to make sure that he didn’t fall over again. “I’m guessing we’ve long-since established there’s no way out?”

“No,” Draco said simply. “Place is guarded, Dark magic.”

Q once again tempered homicidal tendencies, to find the door. There was thin shaft of light around the edges, the only suggestion of an outside world, and the only confirmation for Q that he wasn’t dreaming the entire affair. “Draco, this is the moment where you explain why the hell you’re in here.”

“I, erm, I didn’t kill anybody. I couldn’t kill them. Muggles. They took me with them. I couldn’t kill them, I tried, but the curse didn’t do anything, just, sort-of… bounced. They’ll let me out again in a while… I… it scares me, I don’t like small spaces like this, I don’t like it,” he admitted, clearly angry at himself for needing to do so. “S’weird having other people in here, you lot are important or they’d kill you, you know they’re going to torture you…”

Ollivander made a small sound of panic, and Q shuffled himself in the direction of Draco’s voice, reaching out to find himself directly in front of the boy, a hand on his knee. “Draco, I know you’re frightened, but there isn’t time for that right now. I’m not going to pretend to know what you’ve seen or done, what they’ve asked you to do, but we all need to get out and I think we’re going to need your help, by the sounds of it.”

“I know what Silva’s done to you,” Draco said quietly.

Q honestly felt like ice water had been dumped on his head, crawling under his skin, to the tips of his fingers and through his stomach, his heartbeat slowing, stalling. “What?” he asked again, voice only half-present.

Draco didn’t speak. Luna and Ollivander were deathly silent, barely breathing.

“ _Draco_. What were you told?”

Further silence. Q was pathetically grateful that nobody could see him.

“He’s been raping you.”

If it was possible, the silence became even more pronounced, even heavier; Q could hear his own heartbeat, hammering in his ears. “How?” he asked, throat half-closed. “He… with things the way they are, didn’t think he would… he, those _bastards_ , they’ve happily taken away my _marriage_ , made all of this illegal, but they still happily discuss him doing… doing that, I just…”

Q realised in that instant: his ring was gone.

In the few seconds before comprehension registered and Q lost it, the door opened with a scream of rust and metal, casting painfully bright light over the cellar floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All thoughts and concrit etc are massively appreciated. Thank you for reading! Jen.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy! Jen.

Q pounced at the door with a strangely primal cry of anger and hate, not particularly bothered about what they did to him, not even slightly _thinking_ about what they would do, instinct and red-hot fury sending him flying. 

The figure in the doorway was so surprised that Q actually managed to bowl him over, fists flying and entirely uncoordinated, although marks had to be awarded for passion; the man beneath him yelped, Q punching him in the face and feeling cartilage shift under his knuckles, blood bursting over his knuckles.

Q was only stalled by an impossibly cold, impossibly _solid_ hand closing around his throat. He gasped for air, lifted and thrown to one side, the rat-like creature pinning him to the floor, still by the throat.

The hand was the only thing holding him. The man himself looked almost frightened by his own strength, and it was fair to say that without it, Q would have overpowered him fairly easily. “Wormtail, yes?” Q rasped, having heard enough about the man to recognise him.

“Don’t,” Draco warned loudly from inside the cellar. “Don’t do anything, there’s no point.”

“Yes, listen to him,” Wormtail told him, bloodied, snivelling little face inches from Q’s. 

Q grinned terrifyingly, and spat in the man’s face.

Wormtail growled with petulant fury, wiping it away with his free hand and slapping Q with a pitiful lack of conviction. So pitiful, in fact, that Q didn’t grace him with any response beyond a patronising stare.

The man clearly had no idea what to do with a captive who was so tangibly unperturbed by his attempts at aggression. Thus, he settled for moving the metal hand – and the fact of it being metal was still something Q was struggling with slightly – to grab Q’s collar, and throw him bodily back into the cellar. 

“Relashio,” Wormtail said with a quick wand wave, before Q could recover; Q hissed with anger as ropes erupted from the end of Wormtail’s wand and wound around him, tightening his arms and legs together, binding him firmly in place.

There was little more Q could do, but attempt to get some sense out of the man. “Where is my wedding ring?” Q asked, trying to be level, the light annoyingly bright. Q couldn’t even see Wormtail properly, myopic distortion rendering him a blurred silhouette. “Why am I even here?!”

With malicious enjoyment, Wormtail cast a Cruciatus curse; to Q’s interest, it was nowhere near the level Silva or Jim could manage. It stung a little, and was mildly annoying. “You have no marriage,” Wormtail told him, all petty cruelty; it was amusingly obvious that he was nowhere near in the same league as the other Death Eaters. A lackey at best, the type of unpleasant that had no imagination and no scope.

Q was not even slightly scared of him.

“Is there any particular reason, other than blackmail, that you’re keeping Luna? Because really, abducting children seems a little petulant, even for Death Eaters,” Q told him, not particularly bothered about sparing his sarcasm with such a spineless creature. “Me? I can get that, you may as well make an effort – no matter how misguided – to get to everybody around me.”

Wormtail’s smile was mostly a grimace, and made a strange snorting type of laugh. “They’ll come _running_ for you,” he simpered, moving in closer, trying laughably to be intimidating. “When Raoul comes for you…”

Q rolled his eyes. “Don’t insult me; I’m simply not that easy to intimidate,” he told Wormtail curtly. “As apparently _everybody_ is aware and openly discussing, I have been forced into sex with him. Yes. Hardly surprising, really, he’s always been that kind of a bastard so I don’t _care any more_. I’m _angry_ , and little spineless shits like you are so far down on my list of priorities you cannot begin to imagine.”

The insult was enough to annoy. Q winced as Wormtail delivered a series of nasty kicks to Q’s bound body; he coughed awkwardly, but it was easy enough to bite back and mostly ignore. It was almost insulting, being subjected to the wrath of such a junior league Death Eater.

“This is ridiculous,” Q managed, picking himself up. “Beating a tied-up prisoner. Really classy, congratulations. Is somebody of any value going to be beating me next, or is this my somewhat disappointing lot?”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Draco griped behind him.

Q almost laughed; Draco’s sarcasm was hilarious and utterly infuriating in equal measure, the type of thing to make Q want to both punch him and high-five him all at once. “You can shut up too, Malfoy,” Wormtail taunted pointlessly. “You’re in enough trouble as it is, don’t you try and push me.”

Draco was nowhere near as contemptuous as Q, but it was notable that his fear – and indeed deference – did not extend nearly as far as one might expect. “Yes, Wormtail, I know,” he replied, with a bite of sarcasm.

“I’ll speak to the Dark Lord himself…”

“S’not like he listens to you,” Draco parried; Wormtail lifted his wand, and Q saw Draco’s blurred form fold in an instant. The boy was certainly more brave words than anything else; admirable though it was, he was a terrorised teenager, and words disappeared entirely in the face of potential hurt.

Q spoke up, instead: “Beating a defenceless man, _and_ bullying teenagers. Really, stellar effort,” he said loudly, Wormtail turning back to him as though unsure of who to be angrier with. Luna and Ollivander were mercifully deigning to stay very silent indeed, and Luna hadn’t decided to try anything insane like dart for the door – which Q would have been tempted to do, in her situation – and instead was resolutely remaining with Ollivander.

Luna, and her priorities, were what made Q calm himself down. There was nothing to be gained by anger – and _Merlin_ , but Q had enough anger to make his entire body buzz – and there were others at stake. Care, calm, was needed beyond anything else.

Apparently, Q was not the only one with that thought: “Let’s not be violent,” a voice soothed from outside, clear and crisp, with the suggestion of a smile.

Q’s head spun. Vesper’s voice was fairly unforgettable. _You married my James?_

“No,” Q said simply, frankly, a denial of the obvious because Merlin knew he had to. “Why are you here? Why are bothering to be here? Just to gloat?”

“You can leave us, Wormtail,” she said coldly. “Where are his glasses?”

Wormtail made a strange simpering kind of noise, words swallowed with pointless apologetic noises and nervousness.

“Speak. Now.”

“Accio,” Wormtail managed, his voice squeaking slightly; Q heard the scrape of movement from, weirdly, the corner of the cellar. Apparently his glasses hadn’t been confiscated, but had simply fallen off.

There was a weird moment of inaction, before Vesper sighed irritably. “Are you going to give them to him or not?” she asked impatiently; Wormtail let out another ingratiating series of noises, and slid them awkwardly onto Q’s nose.

Q nodded his thanks as Wormtail scurried back again, feeling annoyingly vulnerable while tied up in the middle of a cellar with a half-dead elderly wizard and two teenagers. “Alright, so what in _Merlin’s name_ are you doing here?” he asked Vesper openly, finally looking at her properly.

“Wormtail. Out.”

“Yes, Miss Lynd,” Wormtail whined, and vanished away in the corridor.

Vesper waited. Q looked at her, really looked, taking in every shadow of a woman he had never known and never thought he would have to know. “Hello,” she said calmly, expression perfectly composed, cloak hanging from her shoulders and sleeves bare, exposing the snake that crept along her forearm. “Either of you two move,” she continued, looking to Luna and Draco, “and I will curse you. I hope that is clear.”

Luna and Draco were both utterly silent. Draco seemed to have leaned closer to Luna, in an almost protective manner that made Q feel rather proud of him. Luna, meanwhile, had her entire body guarding the now-unconscious Ollivander.

“All well in here?” yet another person asked, another silhouette smothering what little light they had, Q’s eyes darting sharply to accommodate Lucius Malfoy.

It was, apparently, a full parade of Death Eaters. “I rather thought you would leave your son be, given the Dark Lord’s displeasure with both of you,” Vesper told him, voice elegance and cruelty. “I doubt he would look kindly on your little visits, do you?”

Lucius was evidently a little uncertain himself, the same expression Draco wore: fear, tiredness, need. “I certainly am not here to give him _sympathy_ ,” he said, in a very passable imitation of true contempt. “I want to see if he has anything to say for himself.”

Draco looked at his father, and Q could now see the boy in the light; he was a shadow of a thing, compared to the boy Q remembered from the Burrow. That boy had begun to come out of his shell again, had looked healthy and started talking to Harry again, had started to heal.

There was nothing left of that. Sparks of defiance burned out with impossible quickness, leaving a boy who had grown up far too quickly, and who had far too much asked of him; Q remembered Harry Potter, and once again found himself unable to believe how brave Harry was.

“Father, _please_ ,” Draco asked, gaze darting around the other occupants of the room, particularly Ollivander, whose breath had started to wheeze.

Lucius continued to stare at his son, Vesper tangibly unimpressed with the silence, with the very thinly-veiled fact that Lucius had only come to check how Draco was doing. Q even respected him a little for caring so much for his child, despite his status as a fairly prolific Death Eater.

Having said that, the man looked like hell. Q couldn’t help but wonder how badly they had punished the Malfoy parents for the Order taking hold of Draco, couldn’t help but think that he may have been responsible for making Draco’s life so much worse. Watching the Malfoy family, Q had rarely felt such profound guilt.

Vesper’s lips were slightly pursed. “Lucius, your son is a traitor to the cause, let him bear the punishment without interference, yes?” she snapped. “Unless you are particularly keen on making things worse; Bella still thinks he would benefit from a dose of the Cruciatus Curse…”

“ _No_ ,” Lucius said emphatically, while Draco’s jaw set, his body unnaturally still barring the suggestion of a tremble. “This is enough, isn’t it, Draco?”

Draco nodded in spasmodic motions. “I won’t do it again, I won’t,” he managed, bitten-off sentences.

“Last chance, Lucius, _go_ ,” Vesper snapped at him, raising her wand.

Lucius watched her, expression almost neutral. “You will regret this,” he promised; Q watched with something approaching confusion, the palpable tension running between the two Death Eaters probably not something he was supposed to witness.

All the same, it appeared that Vesper had the upper hand; Lucius’s posture bowed slightly, and he disappeared, leaving Draco behind.

Vesper stood just inside the cell, staring at Q.

Q stared back, wary, assuming there was something more to wait for. Commentary or cruelty or _something_ , or perhaps another mention of Silva; Vesper was not supposed to be alive, she had betrayed Bond and committed suicide, Bond had told him everything. “How are you alive?” he asked, surprising himself with the question.

Apparently, Vesper hadn’t expected that question either. “I never died,” she replied simply.

“I gathered that, oddly,” Q managed, with great chasms of sarcasm. “ _Why_. Why didn’t you die, and why are you here?”

Vesper was frustratingly, perfectly beautiful. She truly was. Q could see why Bond had liked her. “I took a Draft of Living Death,” she told him, sounding almost repentant. “I had betrayed him – I had to make myself disappear, or he would never let me go. I am here, because the Dark Lord gave me a new life, a new chance, and I’m _here_ because naturally I’m interested in you.”

“Because he loves me?”

“Because he loves you,” Vesper agreed, without hesitation, rendering Q silent for a moment, tension rippling through him.

Q watched as she lowered herself to the ground, opposite him, at eye level. Slowly, she reached a hand out, a hand gently placed on his cheek; Q deliberately shifted away slightly, watching her with unashamed hatred. “You know there’s no point in keeping me. The Order can run without me, and they won’t do anything stupid, not for me.”

Vesper’s hand trailed down his arm, almost curiously, as though testing Q’s tangible reality. “The Dark Lord wants Mycroft beyond anything else, barring Harry Potter himself,” she told him openly. “Mycroft, Sherlock. Lupin is useless, the werewolves are ours. Shacklebolt is a diplomat. The Weasleys are an annoyance. Even James is not important. Mycroft, we all know, is the true leader.”

“They’re really annoying you then, aren’t they?” Q asked, quietly unnerved by her, the cool hand on his skin. “Good to know. Making life difficult?”

Vesper drew away, standing. Answer enough, really, as far as Q was concerned. “Be careful,” she advised. “Pleasure to finally meet you, Q. You’ve been of so much interest to so many people.”

Q grinned impertinently. “I aim to please,” he replied curtly. 

“We need help for Ollivander,” Luna asked, cutting through the strange suspension between Vesper and Q; Draco made a small sound of protest at Luna even speaking, Q could see him curling up into himself in anticipation. “He’s really ill.”

The woman merely raised an eyebrow. “I’m aware,” she told Luna emotionlessly. “Regrettably, he upset the Dark Lord; nobody’s fault but his own. I would advise you remain extremely quiet and don’t irritate anybody, Miss Lovegood – your father would presumably like you returned in one piece. Draco, out.”

Draco didn’t hesitate for a moment, scrabbling to his feet and getting to Vesper; she grabbed his chin as he tried to pass, making the boy look at him. “You are running very short on chances,” she informed him, fingers digging in. “Get upstairs, _now_ , before I change my mind. If anybody asks, refer them to me.”

Q had rarely seen a human being move so fast; Draco was darting up the stairs, tripping over his own feet in his haste, a tangibly terrified figure. “That boy is worth more than the rest of you put together.”

“You do have quite a mouth on you, don’t you?” Vesper returned, with amused disbelief. “Learn to shut it, before it gets you killed.”

Vesper turned to the door, hesitated a moment; a light wave of her wand, and Q’s ropes unravelled into nothing. The door shut, the room fell into darkness, and Q stretched out his aching limbs.

As he did so, he heard the unmistakable clinking of something small bouncing over the stone, rolling to a stop; he followed the sound, groping blindly in the dark until his fingers brushed over a loop of metal, cold and familiar.

“What was that?” Luna asked.

Q closed his fist tight around his wedding ring, trying to understand what it meant that she had given it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts, your words, are perpetually appreciated. Thank you for reading. Jen.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very intense chapter. Hope you guys enjoy! Jen.

For an indeterminate time after that, things became rather… boring, for want of a better word. Nobody came in to torment or be otherwise unpleasant, which meant a shockingly long while spent in pitch darkness, sliding in and out of sleep and/or conversation, wondering what was going on in the outside world. A hatch in the door delivered meals at random times in random quantities, and had to – in Ollivander’s case – be fed to him without light.

“Mr Ollivander,” Q asked, at one stage. “What does he want you for? You-Know-Who?”

Ollivander was incredibly frail, his voice barely existent. He was sleeping, attempting to recover from prolonged bouts of torture without help, without medical assistance; Q remembered how dependent he had been on pain relief after his comparably mild experience with torture, and couldn’t help but wish there were more he could do for the wandmaker.

Now, he spoke, while Luna continued in her fairly abortive attempt to find a way out. “I could not say,” Ollivander replied, with a definite note of apology. “I feel I have already spoken beyond what I ought to have… the Cruciatus Curse, I could not… I tried to resist, you cannot imagine…”

“… I can,” Q amended, and Ollivander fell very quiet indeed.

Q sighed, wishing the edge of anger and tension would leave him now, along with the gnawing hunger that was starting to creep in around the edges in a very major way. Whatever they were fed, Q tended to make sure there was a split between Luna and Ollivander primarily; they needed it more than he did, technically speaking, and so he cursed himself for being a bit of a martyr around the edges and resolved to never tell a soul. After all, they dealt out their food in the darkness, so nobody other than Q knew he was on half-rations.

The hunger had peaked, and was dying back into nothing, by the time they saw another human being. By then, Luna had given up looking for exits, and Ollivander had grown strong enough to talk a little more coherently.

Luna had broken down a little earlier that day, or night, whatever it was. She had been feeling around the doorframe, the locks, across every single stone in the cellar to try and find something, _anything_ , before finally letting out a sobbing scream of frustration and collapsing onto the floor.

Ollivander had been too weak to move. Q scuttled to her side instantly, pulling the girl into a careful embrace. “I want to go home,” she sobbed into his now extremely ragged shirt – Q dreaded to think how he must have smelt, and was pathetically grateful that their toilet bucket automatically Vanished its contents intermittently – and Q just held onto her for dear life, trying to offer some form of comfort.

More time in the cloying darkness. Luna eventually fell asleep in Q’s arms, lank hair trailing over his lap; Q ignored the way his limbs were going dead, and continued to stroke through her hair, cradling her carefully.

The door opened without warning, and the light was literally blinding.

Luna was wrenched away from Q by a harsh hand on her shoulder, throwing her backward; Q tried to focus, blinking without focus, dragged by the forearm out the cellar and stumbling dizzily up the stairs. “Ow,” he mumbled at whoever was holding him, a moment before he was thrown roughly forward to skid slightly on the hard floor in an awkward pile of limbs.

“Where are the Order based?”

Q’s head was spinning, quite definitely not helped by the sharp kick to the side of his head that left him sprawling once again. There were a ridiculously large number of people crowding around.

“ _Where is the Order basing itself_?!”

“Give me a moment,” Q managed, trying to collect himself and sit up, warily looking out for another kick; this time, a boot met his lower back, and Q collapsed back forward again with a short cry of pain.

“Tell us, _now_.”

“I can’t tell you, you _know_ I can’t tell you.”

Bellatrix Lestrange’s voice, taunting: “They call you their _Quartermaster_.”

The assembled Death Eaters laughed with palpable derision, and the anger under Q’s skin burned white-hot, making snide comments seem like a clever idea. “They call me several things, yes, I don’t quite know how that has any bearing on my ability to say a name that is _tongue-tied_ ,” he told them, with palpable sarcasm.

Really, the hex that caught him in the ribs and audibly snapped one of them shouldn’t have been surprising. All the same, Q let out a half-voiced gasp, hands flying to his side. “ _Fuck_ ,” he mumbled under his breath.

“So how d’you break one of ‘em charms?” one of the Carrows – _excellent_ , Q mused, _the Carrows are here_ \- asked, as Q remembered how to breathe, and Bellatrix watched him with palpable distaste.

There was a small discussion, a conference of sorts; Q was rendered unable to do much by virtue of a deft _Immobilus_ from Lucius Malfoy, and he watched with quiet curiosity and sublimated fear as they discussed how to shatter the charm that kept him from giving information even if he wanted to.

“What if he’s lying?” Bellatrix snarled, looking at Q with a excitably predatory expression, like she would happily eat him alive. “Let’s have fun. We’ll see how tongue-tied you are after that…”

“We could call Raoul here, term’s over after all,” Greyback grinned, lecherous, making shudders run along Q’s spine which he carefully suppressed. “He’d _love_ to see Q again…”

Q hit the floor again, as the immobilising charm broke without warning. “I literally can’t tell you where the Order is,” he managed, again. “That won’t change, doesn’t matter, it’s been tongue-tied, how many bloody times?!”

Pain exploded through every neuron of Q’s body, electric jumping through nerve endings, body and blood and heart pumping out acid, everything of him burning and stabbed through at once, infinite needles plunging in and out of his skin.

It stopped, and Q’s throat was raw, retching pure bile. Only now did Q’s clever words abandon him; he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, was trying very hard to suppress tears as his body trembled with aftershocks and he listened to Bellatrix screeching with joy somewhere above him.

Another voice; Q tried to see, unable to make his body lift from the ground, glasses askew on his face. “Bella, do try and be intelligent,” a voice murmured smoothly; Q flinched as a wand was waved in his direction, gasping with shock as his rib fused back into position, a wash of anaesthesia sliding over his body. “Quite how do you expect him to say anything constructive when he can barely form words?”

“Ollivander…”

“… is the Dark Lord’s, to do with as he will,” Vesper replied, and Q’s eyes widened with honest shock, even as Vesper nudged him over onto his back with one foot. Q fell back without argument, body refusing to obey him. “This one we _need_ , if we stand a hope of attracting Mycroft here.”

Q let out a burbling, mildly hysterical laugh. “If you think my state will affect anything Mycroft does, you’re startlingly naïve,” he managed, tears tracking down either side of his face.

Vesper rolled her eyes, and hit him with a Silencing Charm; Q didn’t bother to look annoyed or insulted, just stared blankly at the ceiling, trying to listen.

“… no response yet, what if he isn’t…”

“… should at least get Bond out of hiding…”

They kept looking at him, debating what to do with him, Q lying placidly with the taste of blood on his tongue. “… keep him; if they don’t come to retrieve him, kill him,” Lucius was suggesting.

“Not bad propaganda, if he dies here,” Vesper agreed. “The Order seeming uninterested in protecting their own…”

“But we want _Mycroft_ ,” Bellatrix echoed from earlier, some deep edge in her tone that spoke of just how much she wanted to get her hands on the man. “Our Lord would reward us…”

“… and we can’t let the Order continue as they are,” Vesper completed, sounding troubled, angry somehow. “The priorities are the Holmes brothers. The Blood Traitor remains an _emblem_ to the resistance, we will need to make an example of him…”

Q was breathing again, eyes blazing as he listened to them casually discuss that they wanted to entrap his siblings, listening to them insult Sherlock. In addition, Vesper had gone from confusing to absolutely beyond Q’s understanding; her motives seemed variable and bizarre insofar as Q went, and a part of Q still wondered if she was a somehow-ally, remembering the wedding ring she had returned that now sat in Luna’s care downstairs.

“How are we for Veritaserum?”

Still frozen in place, Q’s eyes widened incrementally. He had only ever tried Veritaserum twice; Mycroft had a stash that he would never admit to, and he had spiked a nine-year-old Q with exactly one drop to establish who had blown up the goldfish. Q had confessed that it had been an accidental burst of magic, and promptly cried for the next three hours, more or less without stopping. Mycroft did not acquire another goldfish.

Q’s other experience with Veritaserum had been Silva. Q tried not to think too much about it.

Vesper cut into Bellatrix’s excitement with tangible enthusiasm of her own: “We don’t have much, but if we need to get through a tongue-tied curse, and/or find some way of contacting…”

“We have very little – the Dark Lord used a good deal on Ollivander…”

“Legilimency?”

That much, Q could certainly deal with. Mycroft had been an exemplary tutor when they were younger, and he sincerely doubted anybody present had the requisite skill for deft mental work; given that they _all_ seemed to have an instinctive recourse to violence, he assumed subtler forms of interrogation were off limits.

It didn’t stop Bellatrix having a go – it was laughable, very gratifying, how easily Q could chuck her straight out of his head again – and Q waited, not too surprised when quiet fell for a moment, and the next thing Q knew, Vesper was smearing clear liquid across his lips, trickling into his mouth.

The spell holding him in place snapped, and Q blinked awkwardly. “Where are the Order based?”

“For the love of Merlin, am I speaking French? It’s _tongue-tied_ ,” Q repeated; Bellatrix hissed with anger, mercifully held back from cursing him again by her fellow Death Eaters. Q cringed and cursed himself for a fool, unable to stop talking. “No amount of Veritaserum or anything is going to make me say a name I can’t physically say, Mycroft cast the thing, I wish you luck, I could never break a spell of his in my _life_ …”

Q tried to cut himself off. Veritaserum was a very potent potion, it transpired, and words were sliding out of his lips without conscious intention. “… my chest hurts, you really need to stop, I’m already a mess, I’ll just implode you know, everything’ll stop in the end… too much… Ollivander isn’t going to last too much longer either… not a very good idea, not a very good idea at all…”

“How can we contact your brother?”

“… which one?” Q asked, with a small and sad smile, and spent every last bit of his remaining consciousness to circle around the questions, protecting the people he loved in whatever ways he had left. “They’ll be livid with me, definitely say they told me so… which they did… although in my defence I did think I could be helpful… don’t regret it, I definitely don’t regret it… maybe a little…”

“Are you brothers contactable?”

“Yes,” Q replied, with no ability to stop himself. “Absolutely yes, but I can’t tell you how, they’re in a place I can’t talk about so why are we still doing this, can’t keep doing this…”

“Are they with the Order?”

“Yep.”

“ _Tell us how we get through to Mycroft Holmes_.”

“No.”

“But you know how?”

“Yes,” Q repeated again, almost wearily, eyes sliding open and shut without much focus, focusing on the various people who were asking him questions. “I’m not going to tell you how, just not gonna do it, nope.”

“Did the mobile phone have something to do with it?”

“Bingo,” Q crowed, as some quieter panicky part of him suddenly realised just how bad things were getting; they were starting to ask the right questions. “Finally we get somewhere, I’m their Quartermaster, you said it yourself… love to know how that got out, by the way, I’m guessing Dung chatted to all of you… horrible little man, never liked him…”

“The phones, Q.”

“Yes, the phones. Phones. We can call. They might’ve have been destroyed after my one got discovered, they wouldn’t risk it,” Q told them, voicing a theory he was less than fifty percent sure was correct. Quite a lot less than fifty percent, but it wasn’t a lie, and it slid out just as well as everything else from Q’s lips. “Wish I had that phone, miss it, miss talking to them, miss them…”

“Do you think they’d come for you?”

Q looked at the ceiling, and his voice was deeply, impossibly sad. “No,” he murmured, seeing Mycroft’s face, and knowing full well. He had no doubt that Mycroft loved him. Mycroft, however, only made calculated risks; Q was important, but not important _enough_. Simple maths.

Nobody seemed particularly surprised. “Not even James?” Vesper asked, her voice triggering every insecurity Q had, every single part of him, and the truth that spilt out of him was entirely unexpected:

“He’d come. He’ll always come.”

Not what Q had especially _wanted_ to say, but it nevertheless caused a strange bloom in him to realise – when compelled – that the core of him still trusted Bond, almost in spite of himself.

The assembled Death Eaters talked amongst themselves for a moment, apparently mostly bickering; Q lay stranded, testing whether or not the potion had worn off, whether he could tell lies yet, through several abortive attempts to say “ _I like marmite_.”

Abruptly, Greyback’s voice, a growling rasp; Q wondered, in passing, just how close to full moon it was. “What would draw him out of hiding?”

Q considered for a moment. “He won’t be trapped, not that easily,” he murmured, considering. “Blackmail won’t work… he’ll wait until an opportune moment, I suppose… don’t know why you bothered with Veritaserum, you know, I could have told you this without potion in my bloodstream… barring the phones, I’m annoyed about that…”

“Is there more you haven’t told us?”

“Course there is,” Q snorted, genuinely finding it rather funny that they’d bother asking; for Merlin’s sake, this was all just fairly childish, they were all ridiculous and asking him silly things. Very silly things.

“Like what?”

“ _I like marmite_ ,” Q mumbled, and grinned wildly.

Several of them were exchanging looks, transparently rather concerned that Q had officially lost his marbles. “He asked a question,” Bellatrix snapped at Q’s prone body; Q flinched, more violently than before, incredibly tired.

Q let out a breath. He could lie, now. He could lie. “I can’t tell you anything. Most big secrets have been charmed out of discussion, even things like the phones are secured – we knew you’d use things like this, we’re a fairly intelligent lot, cleverer than all of you at any rate.”

It was fair to say Q was not being tactful. He didn’t enormously care.

“Final chance – how can we access members of the Order of the Phoenix?”

That, Q thought to himself, was a question they _should_ have asked quite a long time earlier. “Haven’t the faintest,” he told them, merrily enough, wanting to just go somewhere quiet again and sleep for a very long time.

“Waste of potion…”

Q couldn’t help but agree.

“ _Tell Sherlock I’m coming._ ”

Somebody attempted to pull him upright. Q let out a cry of pain as everything wrenched, and everything turned black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments, your thoughts, make my soul sing. Thank you for reading! Jen.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delayed updates, Real Life ate me for a while. Hope you enjoy! Jen.

“… well that was unpleasant,” Q muttered, as he woke up. Pitch blackness still – par for the course – and the entirety of Q’s skin prickled with electrically sharp pain, stabbing deeper as he tried to move.

Luna’s hand was against his forehead, as Q started picking himself up; his head was thrumming, and his chest felt a little like elephants had stampeded across his ribcage, but he was definitely not dead and he hadn’t let anything of real importance out.

Having said that, Q was fairly doomed if they started again; he didn’t really have another round in him. “Is Ollivander okay?” he asked blurrily.

“Fine, dear boy, fine,” he repeated, insistent. “And you? I understand you’ve…”

“M’fine,” Q interjected, deciding against sitting up. He needed to drink some water, breathe a bit better, but moving was very much beyond him; if memory served, it would be thus for a while. “Did anything happen after I passed out upstairs?”

“No,” Luna told him, her voice a little shaky. “They brought you back down here, nothing since, but you’re alright – I checked, but you need to eat…”

“I’m _fine_ …” Q told her, playfully batting her away from his face and gasping as movement wrenched. “Okay. Not fine, per se, but I’ll get there. Where’s the water jug?”

Luna scurried, a small clink sounding as she grabbed up the jug; it was bottomless, mercifully, which had proved invaluable in the time they had all been captive.

The problem was in drinking from it, when Q couldn’t sit up. Eventually, a compromise had to be reached; Luna helped him move, dragging him to prop against the wall as Ollivander had been. Q nearly bit through his own tongue trying not to make any noise for Luna’s sake.

Q gulped down water, wincing at the sudden cramps in his stomach, rather irrationally annoyed at the amount his body was betraying him more second by second. It hadn't really occurred to him that an abrupt influx of water while dehydrated would cause problems; lessons learned.

“Luna – are you alright?” Q asked, his and Luna’s fingers carefully linked; he noticed she’d slipped his ring back onto his finger at some stage, while he’d been unconscious, and he now held onto her in lieu of anything else.

Luna didn’t reply for a moment. When she did, her voice was very small. “It’s hard,” she admitted quietly. “I’m fine though, just, seeing you and Mr Ollivander… I’m so sorry, for both of you, I’m just so sorry…”

The girl didn’t cry, but her voice went from small to non-existent, and Q wished there were anything he could offer in the way of comfort. “I promise I’ll do everything I can,” he told the teenager, meaning every word of it. “I promise.”

She didn’t reply, and Q hadn’t expected her to.

Time passed, again. Q slid in and out of consciousness, preferably the latter. Luna was a source of amusement and sanity when Q’s and/or Ollivander’s seemed to be slipping: “I’m going to miss the Gulping Plimpies season” became a favourite comment for Q, especially given the mournful tone of her voice.

“Gulping Plimpies?” Q asked; he had let the name slide when Luna had mentioned them on the Hogwarts Express, but couldn’t let it go a second time. In all of Q’s time in the Wizarding world, he had never once heard of them.

It was, apparently, the right question; Luna happily went off on a rambling talk about various Magical creatures Q was almost certain didn’t actually exist, but was definitely a good way of distracting from their present situation. “… so how did you and Mr Bond meet?” she asked at one stage.

Q smiled to himself, the cellar darkness a curious forum to describe what had been a perfectly normal afternoon in Flourish and Blotts, very close to closing time, when a beautiful man had walked through the door and flirted and slid over his address saying _just in case_ and Q had realised he was definitely in trouble.

“My girl was like that,” Ollivander told them, the smile audible in his voice. “Swept me off my feet all in a moment. So beautiful.”

Luna’s voice was soothing, gentle. “Were you ever married?”

“Oh no,” Ollivander replied. “She was a Muggle. It was forbidden then, when I was a lad, and she found somebody who could look after her. Annie, her name was. I was so young, then.”

His voice was distant and foggy, losing himself in memories from lifetimes ago. Nobody knew exactly how old Ollivander was, possibly in his nineties, if some rumours were to be believed. Either way, so much time had passed for him, and this was a poor way for such a brilliant man to be reaching the end of his life.

Q was a little unsure of how Ollivander had survived so long in Malfoy Manor. Q himself was just about managing basic things like sitting up on his own, eating small amounts, but he was stabbed in the chest by every heartbeat and the ache never left.

There was no way of telling how time was passing. Meals barely substantial enough for three people were delivered through a hatch in the door, but the time gaps were still weird, and Q wasn’t sure if he’d been there two days or two months. He had no idea any more.

The door opened, and the light was so _bright_. “Feliz Navidad,” a voice purred from the door. “And rather belated happy new year; I’m _so_ sorry I couldn’t be here earlier, but our esteemed Headmaster wanted me at work a little longer. Trying to work out what on _earth_ we do without our clever Astronomy teacher…”

“Are you here to make things worse?” Q asked, with tangible annoyance, tired and very wary. “If you are, get on with it and go, I can’t deal with you right now.”

Silva smirked as he deftly created a floating ball of light that lit the bleak cellar. Luna gasped in shock at the sudden light, Q wincing; Silva ignored them, binding Luna and Ollivander at the opposite end of the cellar with easy motions – “ _forgive me, I would prefer you both to remain out of the way, you understand_  "- and took a moment to clean the three prisoners and cellar up a little. Q felt a welcome warmth spread across every inch of his skin, prickling, dirt and grime lifting from him and his clothing, his hair no longer lank and greasy.

Moving took a lot of energy straight off and twice as much again in willpower, and so Q conserved it very carefully indeed; he remained very still, propped up against the cellar wall. Luna watched him with honest panic, her pale face cleaner now, while Ollivander seemed to curve into himself out of pure instinct.

Silva knelt by him, a hand trailing along Q’s threaded limbs in a way that was more than simply suggestive, resting on his hip with a soft, almost playful expression. “So you _are_ here to make things worse,” Q noted. “Fabulous. Are you quite seriously intending to sexually assault me in front of other people? Although, I suppose you don’t actually remember the last time you tried that…”

It was extremely gratifying, seeing Silva’s expression. “Yes, you attempted to escalate matters two years ago – I had to Obliviate you,” Q told him, a little bit smugly. Bravado was a wonderful thing. “It’ll be buried in there somewhere.”

“I’ll have a look,” Silva purred, continuing to touch, to feel, sliding Q’s shirt off his shoulder with a murmur of satisfaction. Q felt the edges of panic, breath far too quick, a known evil that made the raw nerves of his body twice as intense, searing through him.

When Q moved, everything in him was devoted to it. Before Silva could even consider a response, Q had pounced for the older man’s wand hand, wrestling the thin stick from Silva’s grip and twisting his body around. He didn’t even cast aloud, a jet of light spurting from the end of his wand, Silva caught mid-motion as he grappled at Q and paralysed where he stood.

Luna and Ollivander watched him with frozen disbelief.

“Fuck,” Q managed, looking as shocked as they were by the wand in his hand, by Silva’s Immobilised form. “ _Fuck_. Alright then. Okay. That worked. Fuck.”

Q waved Silva’s wand a little stiltedly – he hadn’t had a wand in what felt like forever – freeing the ropes around Luna, grimacing slightly at the effort of using another person’s hostile wand. It definitely didn’t like him. “I think I’ll need to Summon our own wands,” he murmured to her, while Silva watched, eyes dark and huge with palpable fury. “Is that possible?”

If Q didn’t pull off his newfound impromptu escape attempt, Silva would destroy him.

“In theory, yes, so long as they are not being used by another,” Ollivander told him, voice so much stronger than it had been when Q had first met him. “If a wand’s allegiances have switched, however, they may…”

Q didn’t wait for the end of the sentence. “Luna, be ready, just in case,” he told her, and took a steadying breath. “ _Accio wands_.”

Luna and Q’s own both arrived less than ten seconds later. Luna snagged both out of thin air, passing Q’s to him while Q passed Silva’s to Ollivander. The latter made a small face at the wand, almost confused by its presence, before his dilapidated form straightened a little in readiness. Luna started to help him to stand, while Q stood above Silva, wand extending.

Q swallowed back bile, ignoring the pain that was ravaging him with every moment, the exhaustion. “We need to get out of the building,” he told Silva, voice curt and businesslike. “Tell me how.”

Silva raised an eyebrow. Q’s jaw set. “ _Silencio_ ,” he said first, before: “ _Crucio._ ”

Luna gasped, and Q ignored it quite entirely; the world narrowed to the incredible strength he could feel under his fingers, the gasp of air as he broke off the spell and Silva lay shattered, exhausted, breathing erratically, truly in shock.

Q lifted the spell to allow Silva voice, wand still inches from him. “How do we get out of the building? This place is guarded, Dark magic, yes? It can’t be the Mark, or Draco would have Apparated out.”

On the floor, Silva’s grin was impossibly wide. “Who knew you had it in you?” he said, with a gasp, as he regained control of his breathing. “Impressive work, little Q. Unforgivable Curses. Tut tut.”

“I won’t ask again,” Q told him frankly.

Silva’s smile was quiet, still. “Will you kill me, little Q?”

Q’s expression was utterly merciless. “I am sincerely considering it,” he returned, without mercy, and with utter honesty. “Talk. Now.”

No response; Q Silenced him again to muffle the screams, and recast the Cruciatus curse. The resultant rush of power was intoxicating, impossible, Silva’s body curving and contorting at _his_ behest, and the energy sung through him.

He understood. _Merlin_ , he finally understood.

“ _Q_.”

Q shut off the spell at Luna’s sharp cry, and Silva was barely conscious, shivering with the spasms Q knew too well. “Now,” Q repeated, lifting the Silencing charm.

Silva glanced up at him, eyebrow still cockily raised, and the man _still_ looked somehow in control and Q just wanted to hurt him, just wanted to see him hurt. “You’re already out,” Silva told him, finally just a little bit unsteady.

Initially, Q didn’t understand, Silencing Silva before the man did something moronic like yelling for help. “Dark magic,” Luna echoed. “You… the Unforgivable Curse…”

Q’s eyes widened. “Luna, try Apparating for me,” he asked, still watching Silva with dangerous, murderous intensity.

Luna turned on the spot. Nothing.

“I don’t have the strength to do many journeys,” Q told them, worry bubbling under his skin. “I’ll have to try… Luna, stay here, I’ll be back in two minutes,” Q told her. “Are you alright to stay? I can’t take you both, the stress will be enough on him as it is.”

Luna looked subtly terrified, but nodded all the same, wand extended. Theoretically, there was no way in hell Silva would be going anywhere, and all they needed was to make sure nobody would come and check the cellar.

Oh, and there was also the chance that it simply wouldn’t work, and he would be turning on the spot with an extremely weak elderly man in his arms. Not to mention if it _did_ work, there was no guarantee that he would survive the stress of it.

The press of Apparition, the incredible pressure on his ribcage, squeezing everything out of him; the adrenaline was the only thing keeping his body alive now, only thing keeping him conscious, vision blacking out temporarily as he got Ollivander within the boundaries of Skyfall Manor. Ollivander himself passed out, body slumping by Q’s side.

Whoever was in the house would have to take Ollivander from there; Q had to go back, allowing himself an open sob as he forced his body to twist again, concentration and commitment and all factors managing to get him there despite his mind screaming to never, ever go back.

Q retched violently, body trembling horrifically. “Luna?” he rasped; to his pathetic gratitude, Silva was still bound, still in one place, Luna pale and slightly sweaty. He took a moment, looked over Silva. “Luna, could you do me a favour and not watch?”

“Don’t do it,” she pleaded, while Silva watched with genuine fascination. “ _Please_ , Q, don’t do it.”

The tear of energy through his body, the adrenaline, the sharp impossibility of pain, the power he knew he could access if he tipped over the edge; it was so _close_ now, so close. “Ava…”

“ _Raoul?_ ” a voice asked from outside the cellar.

Luna let out a short cry of horror, and Q grabbed her wrist without hesitation, turning on the spot with Skyfall waiting on the edges of his consciousness.

Frantic gasps for breath, and Q violently retched, blood streaked bile, his body shaking out of control, keening as he tried to control himself; he crawled with a soft whimper, looking up to see a wand inches from his face.

Q gave up, collapsing into a heap. If he hadn’t managed to get out by now, he didn’t give a shit any more.

“Q. Tell me where we first met.”

In his self-acknowledged pathetic state, Q didn’t care enough to lift his head to see who was talking. “I don’t want to do this any more,” he said incredibly quietly at the floor, dimly aware that his glasses were at a weird angle, and he was beyond exhausted. Vaguely, he wondered how he hadn’t passed out yet.

“I won’t ask again.”

A loose, awkward laugh. “We’re all the same,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. Those words had been his, mere minutes ago, somewhere at the other end of the country. “All of us.”

Voices were bouncing around above Q’s head, ones he couldn’t quite concentrate on, sliding in and out of awareness; he heard his name, other peoples’, and he recognised them just about but couldn’t, but tried, and _Merlin above_ everything hurt beyond what he could describe.

A hand gently settled on Q’s head. “Q?”

Q forced his eyes to focus. “Hello,” he mumbled, just as the darkness finally rushed up to meet him, and the voices quieted altogether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all thoughts are received with the eagerness of a child at Christmas. Thank you for reading. Jen.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you all enjoy. Jen.

Q opened his eyes.

The heartbeat of amnesia faded astronomically quickly, given that there was _light_ for the first time in a very long time, after an unknown amount of time kept in the dark. “Hello?” he said aloud, exceptionally unwilling to move if he didn’t absolutely have to.

A blur of movement, hands reaching forward to slip his glasses on. “Hello,” said blur replied, as it took the shape of John Watson. “Well. Still reckon it was a good idea?”

In spite of absolutely everything, Q couldn’t help snorting, laughter shuddering through his body. John smirked too, his expression surprisingly gentle.

Eventually Q calmed, trying to steady his chest movements once again. A moment later, and a smile crept over him. “You’ve dosed me up,” he stated happily, as he realised movement was definitely possible. “Merlin. So it worked, we got here?”

“Yep. Ollivander and Luna, too. They’re both fine, Ollivander’s a bit of a mess but he’ll heal up alright. As will you, by the way. I have no idea how you managed to do anything useful when I’m doubting you can stand up on your own…”

Q let out a rather inelegant cackle. “Haven’t the faintest, don’t want to think about it too closely,” he said, before falling very quiet, letting out a softer sigh. “How have things been? I mean… just,” he trailed off, trying to find words.

John, mercifully, seemed to pre-empt the question. “Under the circumstances, everyone thought it would be best you saw a more neutral figure when you first woke up, not to mention that I need to ask you a few questions,” he explained, and raised a hand in a somewhat sarcastic hand wave. “Your brothers and James are all downstairs, they’ve all been raising merry hell…”

“Can I see them?”

“Do you want to right this second?” John parried, a moment later, and Q quieted in mild confusion. John sighed, selecting words with as much care as he was able. “Q, I consider you a close friend.”

“… yes,” Q agreed, narrowing his eyes very slightly.

“Yes, and I need you to forget that for a moment,” John told him, with a slightly apologetic shoulder quirk. “I need you to think of me just as your doctor, and know that anything you tell me is in confidence. It is important that you tell me the truth, however.”

Q nodded, slowly, warily.

“As your doctor,” John reiterated, still with unbelievable care. “I need to know if you were raped.”

-

John spent a while asking Q for details of all that had transpired since they had last seen one another, since Q had been closed into Hogwarts and then in Malfoy Manor. In a voice devoid of any true emotion, Q clinically documented everything of note, completing his narrative with a final look at John’s expression.

Q remembered just how fond he was of John: the man’s expression hadn’t changed in the slightest. He took everything in, and dealt with it as he needed to, as Q’s doctor.

“Can I talk to you as a friend, now?” he asked at the end, with a wry smile that John mirrored

“By all means,” John agreed. “Hello, Q. Are you alright to see James or your brothers?”

Now, Q understood why John had asked earlier: honestly, with a moment of thought and clarity, he knew that he simply _couldn’t_ see Bond. Not yet. There was an inescapable humiliation that made him burn, and he couldn’t bear for Bond to see him like this.

John waited patiently, didn’t push. “Myc,” he replied, after a moment. “I’d like to see Mycroft, if you don’t mind.”

Mycroft never judged. Mycroft asked all the questions that were necessary, and not a single one more. Mycroft could read Q better than anybody else, even his husband, and Mycroft had been a constant in Q’s life since before he could remember.

“Of course,” John nodded, standing and stretching out his back. He had lost weight since Q had last seen him, looked a little tired, a little pale. “I’ll go get him, you alright on your own?”

Q shrugged, and watched John leave.

Less than a minute later, there was a tap on the door. “Hello?”

Mycroft had lost a _lot_ of weight, looked a touch unwell actually. Q recognised the signs of the man having overworked himself for a very long while, even his clothing somewhat dilapidated.

For precisely the second time in Q’s memory, Mycroft moved straight to Q’s side, and only he hesitated very briefly to check whether Q was alright with it, before bundling Q straight into his arms.

Mycroft cradled him with such tangible care, like he had when Q was a child. Mycroft had near enough raised him, twelve years his senior, sometimes an absolute twat but it could never be said that he wouldn’t give everything for his siblings.

Neither spoke. Q buried himself in his brother’s arms, Mycroft’s body curved around him like an exoskeleton.

“What can I do?” Mycroft asked quietly.

Q had no idea. He didn’t reply.

Mycroft didn’t press the matter, just held onto him.

“I cast an Unforgivable Curse, Myc,” he murmured into his brother’s shirt. “I wanted to kill him. I still do.”

There was nothing Mycroft could say. Q hadn’t expected anything. Eventually, he fell asleep, Mycroft’s arms still wrapped around him.

-

Q woke up again when pain was jabbing into him, letting out an inadvertent sound.

A warm hand cupped his face, coaxing him awake, and Q blithely drank the potion; within a minute or two, the pain had died back, and Q could focus properly. “Thank you,” he said honestly, recognising Mycroft. “Did you stay?”

Mycroft simply raised an eyebrow.

“Thank you,” Q repeated, softer this time, and let out a slow breath. “Okay. Two things: one, I’m stupidly hungry…”

“… yes, Molly’s champing at the bit to feed you up,” Mycroft completed, expression more than illustrating that Molly had definitely been _insistent_. “And?”

“And I’d like to see James,” he completed, with a definite sting of determination. He had missed Bond so much, too much, and the thought of seeing him simultaneously terrified him and sparked a longing so intense it took his breath away. “I… this’ll probably seem weird, don’t ask, but could you stay with me when I see him?”

Mycroft nodded and dutifully didn’t ask, stretching out uncomfortably as he stood. “I’m near enough certain you’ll be getting enough food to drown a mermaid, but please try not to feel pressured, everybody’s a little overprotective,” he drawled. “ _Bond_.”

Minutes later, there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Q called, as Mycroft settled back in the corner, crossing his legs. The door opened, and Q craned his neck slightly to try and see Bond, smiling ridiculously as a tray full of food preceded him, Bond carefully levitating it onto Q’s lap. He acknowledged Mycroft with a brief nod, and took it as given that the man was staying.

“Engorgio,” Bond said to Q’s pillow, with a wave; the pillow expanded to several times its size, propping Q upright in ridiculous fluffiness. The sheer silliness of it as an idea was enough to make Q giggle, a little shyly, unashamedly very excited by the amount of food in front of him.

Bond watched Q in a way Q didn’t have the words to describe. Months, all the time that had passed.

“What’s the date?” Q asked, and half-laughed again at the fact that his first words to his husband were so mundane.

Bond smiled back, shuffling the chair closer to the bed. “Twentieth of January,” he replied, and reached out to lay his hand on Q’s; Q pulled back on reflex, and Bond let it happen without question or comment.

Q’s eyes abruptly widened. “I missed Sherlock’s birthday,” he said in horror. Mycroft glanced up; he was doing a sublime job of disappearing into the background, but apparently the mention of their sibling was enough to pique interest. “Is he… how is he?”

“Fine, we all are,” Bond replied gently, and with Bond – unlike Mycroft, or John – it was possible to actually believe it. Bond didn’t look any different to how Q remembered him. Maybe the odd scar or the odd line added now, but in essence the same, the smell and feel and warmth of the man Q had married.

The only problem was Bond’s expression. The way he looked and acted, as though Q was incredibly breakable. Strike that, he actually looked like Q was long-since broken.

Q decided it had to be paranoia, and let it go. “I’ve missed you,” Bond told him. “I’ll be pissed off with you about running off in the first place later.”

“You know why, yes?”

Bond nodded, albeit a little reluctantly. “I still think it’s probably the most idiotic thing I’ve ever known you do, but yes, I get it. According to Minerva and Aurora…”

“Shit, of course, how is she?” Q interjected, sitting up straighter, wincing with irritation as his chest fired up with pain.

Immediately, Bond leaned in, establishing whether Q was alright with tangible fretting; Q just looked at him, blinked, raised an eyebrow. “I’m worried about you, forgive me,” Bond commented drily, and the tension slid out of Q’s body again.

“I don’t want you to treat me like a victim,” Q said firmly, before there were any attempts to the contrary. Mycroft, if it was possible, had become even stiller. “I’m not a victim. I’m fine. Before you ask: yes, Silva raped me. I’m fairly sure most of the Western world knows this by now, judging by general conversation – if people start treating me like I’m going to burst into tears at the slightest trigger, I’m going to curse the lot of you.”

To Q’s interest, Bond just grinned. “That’s my Q.”

Q raised an eyebrow. “Is it, now?” he replied, not certain himself of whether he was teasing or not. “Am I really so predictable?”

Bond chose his words very, very carefully. “You’re not the type to let anybody patronise you,” he told Q slowly. “So yes, you’re a little predictable in that sense.”

Very quickly indeed, Q darted forward and pressed a small kiss to Bond’s lips. He moved back instantly, almost shocked by his own actions, working out how he felt about it while Bond watched him in absolute stillness.

After a moment or two, Q nodded. “Alright, so that was weird,” he murmured, gaze unfocused. “Still not sure how I feel about that. Might need to pause indefinitely. Erm. So – merry Christmas and New Year, by the way… didn’t manage to get you a present…”

“None of us did, really,” Bond told him apologetically, letting the subject slide onwards. “Shopping hasn’t really been possible, we’re all on the Death Eater most-wanted list. John’s been brewing enough Polyjuice to drown the lot of us so we can go get supplies…”

“Oh Merlin, yes, how’s the Holmes estate? Still full of Muggle-borns?”

At the mention, Bond’s face fell very slightly. “Yes, but it’s getting very difficult to maintain the place,” he explained, sounding rather tired. “Like I say: shopping isn’t very possible, and we’re _all_ on lists these days. I think there’s a kill-capture over my head…”

“… mine too…” Mycroft commented drily, without looking up.

“… and both Sherlock and John,” Bond continued, listing them off his fingers. “Kingsley, obviously, and the Weasleys have had to move in here…”

“Merlin, yes, I need to see Sherlock,” Q said quickly, eyes darting to Mycroft again. “Is he around?”

Mycroft nodded. “I can fetch him, if you would like? I would imagine John would rather like an update on your situation too, if you can bear the masses descending,” he drawled, waiting for Q’s answering nod before heading for the door.

The tension in Q’s body ramped up a notch, and dissipated almost immediately when he realised that Mycroft was only poking his head out the door, calling for both and returning instantly to his seat.

Q fidgeted, curling the blankets tighter around himself. “Cold,” he said by way of an excuse, before the door opened to admit Sherlock and John.

“Hello,” Sherlock nodded, walking in, looking just as terrifying and unapproachable as he always had. “Have we had the ‘you-drugged-us-to-run-away-to-your-rapist’ conversation yet?”

Mycroft rolled his eyes skywards. “Tactful, Sherlock,” he berated, while John whacked him on the arm. Q smiled despite himself, despite the heaviness of Bond’s worried eyes on him and the sharp shiver of anger that rolled along his spine.

Sherlock, of course, merely raised an eyebrow. “I’ll take that as a no,” he said smugly, and twisted to Q. “You decided to employ my boyfriend to drug your siblings and husband. Morally a little questionable, wouldn’t you think?”

Q blinked, eyes a touch wide. “Not necessarily my brightest idea,” he conceded. “I’d hoped you all weren’t quite so pissed off any more.”

“I don’t forget the people who’ve drugged me in my life,” Sherlock replied primly, without apology. “In particular, where my own brother in involved. That, however, is not the problem; I am more concerned that you felt it necessary.”

“Because you would never have let me go,” Q replied simply.

Sherlock’s eyebrow seemed to go ever higher. “Were we wrong?”

“Yes.”

To Q’s tremendous pride, Mycroft nodded in agreement. “I attempted to say earlier: without Q, it is highly possible that the level of violence would have been far higher. Minerva is rather concerned, actually, about how Hogwarts will cope with Q’s absence from hereon in – I am hopefully right in saying that this time, you are not intending to return? Given your recent abduction, et cetera.”

Q shook his head, smiling very slightly despite himself. “No. You know I actually would, if it weren’t for… well… anyway. Don’t regret it, not really, not great but… fuck it, I don’t know.”

Bond reached out, placing a hand on the blanket, finding Q’s hand underneath and not saying a word when Q extricated it again. John handed him over a potion from a very deep bag – Q downed it as directed, while stabbing merrily at toast – and didn’t say a word.

Mycroft just watched him, without commentary, without even a true change of expression; Q just understood, and it made sense, calming him down by increments.

“Did I mention,” Sherlock smiled smugly. “I’ve become something of a prominent figure in the Order, as somebody who chose not to use magic,” he explained smoothly. “I’ve started writing pieces on non-magical life, pro-Muggle propaganda.”

“I know you have,” Q returned, with very vivid memories of the brightly-coloured pamphlet that had precipitated the peak of his problems with Silva. “I only saw one piece of your writing, how’s it been?”

A comfortable shrug, and no further explanation. “He’s been read by people up and down the country,” Bond supplemented, making Q realise that Sherlock’s customary arrogance was curiously depleted. “There’ve been notable rises in the number of Muggleborn shelters since the first was distributed, there are now several dozen that we know of…”

“… and there are active Muggle shelters too, they started clamping down on families of Muggle-borns,” John explained, propping himself against the wall now every other seat was taken. “I’ve been writing bits and pieces too – I don’t think the Muggle and Wizarding worlds can exist together, but wizards could certainly help the Muggle world and vice versa. Surreptitiously, I mean. Full openness about the two worlds right now would be an immediate way to cause conflict – Muggles would be resentful and retaliatory, Wizards would potentially seek superiority – but letting the two cross over more could be at least a first step.”

Q nodded his understanding, tiredness washing over him. Too much information in a short space of time, and his chest was hurting again.

“Everybody out,” John was saying, and Q realised he’d closed his eyes at some stage, that John’s voice was sliding out of focus.

Mycroft. Q needed Mycroft. “I’ll stay,” Mycroft said, the last thing Q heard before he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments and thoughts make my day exponentially brighter. Jen.


	25. Chapter 25

The next couple of weeks blurred somewhat.

Q spent a day or two in bed before decided that was enough of that, he was bored of being bedridden. True, he couldn’t last very long before his body irritatingly decided to stop being helpful, but he refused to let it get in the way for the sake of his pride.

Molly Hooper was the one to get him out of bed. Apparently, she was the primary doctor for the Order now; she went in between all safe houses – one of maybe a handful who knew where all of them were – and dealt with matters as they arose.

Muggleborns, those who had harboured Muggleborns, some half-bloods and sympathisers who had run away; many had been intercepted by the Ministry, and in the case of all those currently in Dedalus Diggle’s old house, were in the middle of being shipped to Azkaban when the Order broke them out. Many of them had needed medical help, and Molly was all the Order had.

Q’s respect for her increased tenfold.

“John’s also brilliant,” she said quickly, when Q voiced his thoughts on the matter. “I can’t do everything, he’s learnt Muggle medicine, anybody actually _in_ the Order goes to John now at HQ… if he could Apparate he’d be here, same as me… and he makes _all_ the potions now…”

It was one of Q’s favourite new discoveries: despite being quite entirely Muggle – and so needing the occasional wand wave from a passing wizard – John had become a truly extraordinary potioneer. “So you go from place to place?” Q prompted, as she monitored him sitting up, swinging legs over the side of the bed.

“Yeah,” she replied, watching Q’s expression carefully for signs of pain as he – somewhat tremulously – stood up. “I go back home whenever I can, Irene hates being there on her own…”

Q glanced at her abruptly, still holding onto her for support as his ribs objected to him moving. “Sorry, out of interest…”

Molly flushed bright, burning pink. “Yes,” she said quickly, before he could finish the question. “Me and Irene. We… yeah, we’re sort-of together, happened a bit after you left. S’good, I mean, I know you and her don’t get on but…”

“Don’t worry,” Q interjected quickly. “If you’re happy, I’m happy for you.”

At which point he took a step forward, said _ha_ victoriously, and very nearly fell down again.

As it turned out, Irene and Molly being a relationship was not the most important new development of recent days: Sherlock and John were engaged.

“ _Merlin_ ,” Q squeaked, as he saw the ring on Sherlock’s finger, wondering how in Merlin’s name he had missed it before. “That’s… you’re not. You’re not?!”

Sherlock smirked, and nodded with something approaching smugness. “I am,” he replied smoothly. “In the light of recent events, it seemed wise to formalise our relationship before too long. Not to mention that Mycroft’s expression is something I shall treasure until my dying breath.”

Q all but snorted with laughter, and pulled his brother into a brief hug, pulling back quickly when he felt the unforgiving curl of Sherlock’s arms around him, and for the shortest of moments, panic rendered Q breathless.

“I’m… Merlin, I’m delighted for you,” Q told him, and meant it quite wholeheartedly; he had to say, he hadn’t ever imagined Sherlock would get married. “When’re you thinking?”

“It depends on whether or not we can find somebody able and willing to perform the ceremony,” Sherlock replied, a little drily. “For the time being, it remains a notional thing. On that note: while the Ministry have decreed your marriage invalid, you ought to be aware that the resistance movement have wholeheartedly rejected the idea.”

Briefly, Sherlock’s eyes darted to Q’s hand; his ring was missing, because it didn’t fit properly, not with the amount of weight Q had lost. It was sat on his bedside table instead, waiting for him.

Q still couldn’t bear to be alone. He dealt even worse with being alone with somebody else, unless it was Mycroft, who had become an anomaly; a few nights after waking, Q was sat in his room with his laptop, Mycroft glancing through papers with a constricted expression. “I don’t know why,” Q said unexpectedly. “Why it’s you.”

Slowly, Mycroft glanced away from his papers, back up to Q. “You don’t have to,” he replied calmly, watching Q with understated curiosity. “I imagine, however, that my involvement is not what is concerning you.”

That effectively silenced Q for a little while. Laptop forgotten, he drank the tea Molly Weasley had made for him – she, and the rest of the Weasleys, had needed to disappear – and tried to work his head around quite why he couldn’t cope with being alone with his own husband.

It took another two days before even attempted the conversation: “It’s nothing about you, almost,” Q admitted. “I love you still, more than anything, and it’s… every time I look at you I’m reminded of why I love you, but…”

“Silva?” Bond suggested quietly.

Everything in Q’s body and soul revolted against that notion. “It isn’t important,” he said quickly, lividly. “It’s done. It was shit. It’s _over_.”

Bond continued to look at Q with that _infuriating_ mix of apology and pity, a look that made Q want to scream; he was not a victim. Silva did not, _could not_ , have that kind of effect on his life. It was something else, something in the mess of Hogwarts – torture and captivity and unmeasurable stress – had tipped him over the edge.

“Q…”

“Stop it,” Q snapped tiredly, biting his tongue from further attack, and the pain lanced through his sternum towards the back of his neck, stabbing into his brain. _Fuck_ , he hated this, hated feeling like this.

It made talking to Luna, to Ollivander, a very important thing. Both of them understood, at least a little bit. Luna needed to be around as many people as possible all the time, needed to talk and be talked to, and found the Weasley family – especially Ginny and the twins – a source of sanity when her mind screamed too loudly.

Ollivander just couldn’t cope with loud noises, with sudden movements. He was by far the most obviously affected; panic attacks, nightmares, and couldn’t be around large numbers of people at all. He trusted Luna and Q above anybody else, and Q wound up sat by Ollivander’s bedside when he was able to move more freely, letting the man sleep or occasionally talk in a rasping voice.

A few nights in, Skyfall held an impromptu party. It was partly a belated Christmas and New Year, partly a celebration that Q and the others had got out of Malfoy Manor, partly that everybody desperately needed an excuse for some sort of celebration because everybody was getting very tired.

The Death Eaters tried to raid various locations fairly frequently, the pressure was mounting on every front. Under Mycroft’s leadership, the Order had been personally responsible for saving well over a hundred people. They were mounting diplomatic negotiations with countries around the world, pleading for interventions. Support for the resistance was being rallied from every front, if not fighters then at least those who could supply resources and help.

In any case, everybody was in dire need of an evening off.

Ollivander stayed away, but both Q and Luna were planning to delightedly engage in an evening of conversation and cake.

Luna collared him before they went downstairs. “How are you, Q?” she asked lightly, slipping her hand into his in a way that somehow remained comforting.

“Better,” he said honestly, holding back tightly. Without Luna, Q honestly wasn’t sure how he would have got through his time incarcerated without completely losing his mind. “How are you, now you’re back?”

Luna smiled. “It changed a lot,” she told him enigmatically, meeting Q’s curious gaze. “You’re not coping very well, are you?”

Q’s eyes narrowed. “I’m fine.”

Of course, Luna being Luna, she just shrugged noncommittally. “I know it makes you angry. It makes me angry, too.”

“Not like it makes me angry,” Q returned, voice closed with tension, still gripping onto Luna’s hand. “It doesn’t stop any more. I just want to destroy him, take him to fucking _pieces_ like he has me, and I’m _so_ angry I can’t _think_ any more, I just want all this to stop.”

Luna squeezed his hand gently, and looped her arms around him in a hug; there was something about her, the femininity of it, her slim body and the light floral scent of her hair as she held onto him. Utterly unlike the choking spice that seemed to be there every time he opened his eyes, so much safer.

All the same, Q only lasted a few moments before extricating himself.

They headed downstairs, and Q smiled despite himself as everybody waved in greeting. “Welcome back home,” they all said delightedly, people crowding the reception room and over-spilling into the living room.

Bill had nipped over from Shell Cottage for a night, Irene was over from the Holmes estate – Tonks had stayed, given that Apparating wasn’t ideal while pregnant – but Remus had come, Kingsley was there. The Hogwarts staff were all back in Hogwarts itself, now a new term had started.

Q had missed being able to just talk openly, honestly. Naturally there was a degree of uncertainty; most people seemed to be wary of anything too contentious at first, until Q made it unequivocally clear that he did not want to be treated like glass.

“… and when Hestia died, that made everything a little harder…”

“Hestia?” Q interrupted, with a small noise of shock. “What? She’s dead?!”

Remus nodded sadly. “We couldn’t get there in time,” he explained. “She was involved attempting to help a Muggle family, a child of theirs showed magical tendencies and we got involved before the Ministry did – regrettably, only by about ten minutes, and they hadn’t even begun to understand what was going on before the Ministry descended. They killed her, the mother and child caught in the crossfire. The father has been Obliterated and relocated.”

Q let out a slow, almost disbelieving breath. “Merlin,” he murmured. “Never thought we’d lose her. Anybody else I should know about?”

A few glances were exchanged, a few names Q only half recognised. A few Hogwarts students’ families – the ones who had disappeared from Hogwarts, avoiding the compulsory attendance – had been murdered, some had been simply hunted, some were still deeply in hiding.

Mercifully, the French had been very accepting of fleeing British wizards, and the Order had begun secret communications unofficial French departments; it had been difficult to demonstrate that the Ministry was now corrupt, but Mycroft had a number of contacts that he had worked through.

It was true to say that it had not been easy. The French were very reluctant to potentially defy a very powerful regime.

“… but, we have found certain places – Apparation points, some flight paths, Muggle routes even – that we could use to smuggle refugees out of the country. It is somewhat slow progress at present,” Mycroft explained, taking a sip of Firewhiskey. “However, it is certainly a positive development after quite so long attempting to hide as many as possible. There is only so far we can press our allies in the UK.”

Q whistled out another breath. “Alright – so how are we doing for concealment, tracking et cetera?”

Mycroft spread his hands in an open gesture. “I would be delighted to take advice from you, given the job you have done here,” he said freely. “If you would like to become more involved – health dependent – then you would be welcome.”

“Thank you,” Q returned, honestly grateful for the chance to actually _do_ something; he was dreading the idea of being bored, of being redundant in a place that had become used to how they ran things.

Stories were volleyed back and forth, and Q contributed a fair number himself; Hogwarts was a fascinating subject for everybody present, given how closed it had become, and once everybody realised Q was not reticent about talking, they all started to pile in with questions.

Luna corroborated everything Q said, and Q noticed how everybody very neatly avoided any questions about Silva; he was – in spite of his many assertions that he was absolutely fine – fairly grateful that nobody was talking about him. The pressure of a very large social situation, hearing stories of the wizarding world and telling too many of his own, was putting a certain degree of strain on him.

Irene spent the night attached to Mol. Q honestly had never gotten on with her better; now she was tied to another person – and yes, the fact it was a woman did help – it was enough to slightly assuage the fear of Irene pouncing on Bond at the first possible occasion.

“Q?” John asked, voice a quiet suggestion that Q understood immediately: he needed sleep.

Q therefore nodded. “I’m off, ladies and gents, quite enough excitement for one evening,” he said with honest brightness, looking around at all of them and wishing quietly that they all lived in Skyfall. Most of them, he potentially wouldn’t see for a while; Remus needed to be with Tonks, Irene couldn’t Apparate on her own as a Squib, Bill and Fleur spent most of their time looking after affairs in Shell Cottage.

Everybody bid Q farewells with grins and general joy, all of them loudly asserting that he had been very much missed; Q returned the sentiment, and trudged upstairs with John on his heels.

“Pain?”

“Seven and a half. Maybe eight,” Q admitted, dipping his head shamefacedly at John’s expression: he had promised that he would retire from the party if the pain went above a seven, or at _least_ should have taken more potion. “Sorry. I just…”

John rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know,” he interrupted, before Q could mumble out more apologies. “It’s fine, but you’re not moving for the next twelve hours _or else_.”

Q grinned, and nodded delightedly. “Of course,” he grinned. “I’ll be good as galleons.”

“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it,” John muttered, and handed over one of the more concentrated potions. One that Q knew contained narcotics, as it happened, and he just didn’t mind in the slightest.

Sleep came at him, and for the first time in weeks, Q didn’t dream.

-

Morning, and Q was looking over security measures for the various safe houses the Order was running, as well as trying to organise safer ways of smuggling Muggles out of the country as per discussions the previous evening.

“You trust me,” Q pointed out at one stage, sat cross-legged on an armchair with papers and documents splayed out around him, laptop perched precariously on his knee for reasons nobody could get out of him. Bond and Sherlock were both sat around the room – the fire blazed merrily in the grate and the sofas were brilliant, making the living room by far the most comfortable room in the house – and looked up at Q.

Sherlock waved at Bond to answer. Bond was just quiet, tangibly confused by the question. “Why wouldn’t we?” he asked, while Sherlock returned to work of his own. “Should we not?”

Q shrugged spasmodically. “I’ve been under direct control, in every sense, of somebody you know is… well, isn’t on our side, and you haven’t seen me in months and you know I could be, not turned, but… I don’t know, why aren’t you more worried that I’m working for them under threat or something?”

Bond mercifully didn’t insult him by answering immediately, but considered it for a moment. “I suppose you could be,” he said carefully – Sherlock glanced up in abrupt indignation, ignored by Bond – and continued: “But ultimately, we don’t have the luxury of not trusting you. There aren’t enough people in the Order for us to distrust you or treat you as a threat. We’re prepared to put ourselves on the line, on faith in you, and I don’t see any reason not to. Should I?”

“No,” Q replied slowly, carefully. “I just wondered. I don’t know if I’d trust me, under the circumstances.”

A small nod of acknowledgement. “Well,” Bond murmured, moving to Q’s side, kneeling by the armchair and reaching out to tentatively place a hand on Q’s leg. “Good thing we’re not you, then.”

Q’s smile was small, but present all the same. He gently moved Bond’s hand away from him.

Bond levitated his work to Q’s side, and stayed sat at Q’s feet in front of the fire, quiet. Sherlock vanished after a little while, and Q breathed out slowly and kept his wand within reach for the sake of his sanity, thoughts running in crazed circles.

Bond remained still, just working, letting Q do whatever he liked.

“James… you’ve never talked about being in the Ministry. You never told me you worked with Silva, never told me what you did or why you did it, and there are things I hear and I don’t know who you are sometimes, when I hear these kinds of things, I don’t know what to do with it any more…”

The thoughts had sat under his skin, and were purging themselves as best they could all at once. Bond just stared at him, extremely still.

“… and you hurt people, and I know how that feels now, I tortured him, I did it and I _liked_ doing it, I know how it feels to have that kind of power over another person and James, I think you liked it too. I think he actually _was_ telling the truth about you, what you did, how you were and it’s not you any more, I know that, but I think I deserve to know what you were because _fuck_ , James, you know everything about me.”

“Q…”

“No, let me finish,” Q interjected, voice rising slightly. “You never told me anything, and that’s okay, but _not_ when it affects me. Not like this, not with…”

Q’s throat strangled him mid-sentence, the thought of Silva’s body pressing against him, the words and the truth that spilt from his lips and Q _hated_ him.

Hated both of them, if he was honest. Certainly in that moment.

Bond reached out, hand over Q’s, and Q internally cursed everything as he felt everything swamp him in a heartbeat, the touch just _too much_ , his mind short-circuited, and he promptly passed out.


	26. Chapter 26

Everybody was crowding around Q’s laptop, with Q sat in the middle, grinning like a madman.

On screen, there was clear footage of Hogwarts. Term had started a few weeks previously, and – without anybody realising – Q had somehow rigged a number of classrooms and offices with Muggle cameras.

“… and the signal works in the same manner as the phones, spells keeping them from interference or Death Eater hacking. Because they’re Muggle devices Wizarding detection shouldn’t work on them,” Q was explaining, at a truly extraordinary speed. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to access them, I set them up on the network but accessing them was potentially not going to work, I didn’t really know if they’d even worked given that I didn’t have a laptop or a way of accessing the network, this was just on the offchance and this means we have eyes and ears in Hogwarts…”

Mycroft placed a hand on Q’s, stemming the relentless flow of speech, Q flushing pink. “Well done,” he said simply. “Now, where we go from here. If we can acquire footage and evidence of maltreatment in Hogwarts, we may stand in better stead internationally. Have we any ideas on how we access Hogwarts itself?”

Q shook his head, with tangible annoyance. “Working on it, but at the moment I can’t begin to imagine. Otherwise I’d have got out sooner, let’s be honest. So I would think we’re only able to watch, for now.”

Everybody was absolutely, unapologetically fascinated. The irony was that there was very little to see; the cameras could not begin to capture the overall atmosphere, and acts of violence were nasty but sporadic.

There were cameras in the major classrooms. Dark Arts and Muggle Studies were the most interesting; the former was an exercise in sadism, the latter an exercise in bigotry. Children were being asked to buy into the doctrines wholesale, and the truly frightening aspect was that they were tangibly beginning to do so.

After all, the earlier years barely knew better. The first-years were told how Muggles had taken away the greatest progresses of the Wizarding world, were dangerous savages who had to be contained for the good of the overall development of their species. Dark Arts involved tutelage in self defence and indeed attack, with later years focusing on interrogative and punishment techniques against anybody they wished.

Practise outside of classes was encouraged. It was, for those who had ever taught in Hogwarts, a heartbreaking thing to witness. Despite the old mantra - _there was never a witch or wizard who went bad that wasn’t in Slytherin_ \- there were cocky Gryffindors, the mercilessly intelligent Ravenclaws, the earnest and wary Hufflepuffs, all casting the same spells. The boundaries between Houses had blurred beyond recognition now.

Of course, there was still the rebellious core, most of whom were in upper years. “Neville is going to get himself killed,” Bond muttered, as footage played out the night-time escapades of those desperately trying to fight back.

“He led all of us,” Ginny piped up; she had, out of necessity, not returned to Hogwarts as originally planned. “I didn’t know he was that… well, that good at things, really, he’s completely changed in the last year…”

Q nodded in agreement. “I’m shocked, didn’t realise he had it in him. I mean all power to him, but it’s just… odd. Impressive, but odd.” 

Ginny smiled sadly, watching her friends, people she had been working with and wanted so badly to be with. The youngest Weasley was not made for being still, being out of the way; she needed to be involved and couldn’t be, and it was visibly killing her.

Instead, Ginny had joined the Order. The point about age was now moot; the Order needed as many members as humanly possible, anybody who was prepared to fight and work for the resistance movement. Ginny was an excellent strategist, it turned out, and had been working closely with Mycroft for the previous couple of weeks.

Now, Q had something to actually do. Working on getting Muggleborns and other refugees out of the country was an impressively difficult mission, not to mention that if the French became hostile they had nowhere to go.

Q was enjoying himself in that regard. Monitoring Hogwarts was a less agreeable pursuit; it was extremely difficult to watch, and be completely unable to intervene. Student welfare seemed to have remained about on the same level as previously, with the general atmosphere very much on edge.

Terry Boot was beaten by the Carrows when he wound up in a duel with a second-year who had cursed a fellow student; the student in question found himself disarmed and immobilised, in time for Terry to be hemmed in by the Carrows and taken apart for the insult of Disarming a student who had done ‘nothing wrong’ other than practise his curses.

The injustice of it made everybody indignant and horrified, while Q just watched with quiet sadness and felt his fists clench a little every time he caught a glimpse of Silva.

“I miss mummy,” Q said abruptly to Sherlock, somewhat out of the blue, causing his brother to flinch slightly and look up very sharply indeed. “Sorry. I know you’re… but don’t you ever miss them? In spite of everything?”

Sherlock watched him, with a strange and somewhat tight expression. He didn’t speak for a long while, extremely still, barely breathing. His quiet “ _yes_ ” was carried on a whisper, his expression wide-eyed and angry and almost shaking.

There was too much in the way of buried anger and buried regret, the loss of Sherlock’s entire childhood at the age of eleven after a younger life of a very close family; his family had split down the seams and taken Q with it, and within a few years his father – and then his mother – had died.

Sherlock had been banned from his father’s funeral, and had utterly refused to go to his mother’s.

Q had a strange half-memory of his family. After Sherlock had left, his parents had become somewhat foreign creatures, sharp and passive aggressive to an absurd degree; Q had missed his brothers more than words could express, and frankly, Mycroft was a better parental figure than his actual parents had ever been.

Yet, he had grieved more than he had imagined he would when they died – and yes, he missed them. There was something inexplicably comforting about the memory of what had been, of the earliest stages of his childhood before everything had started to go wrong. Especially now Q felt as uncertain as he did, he missed the comfort of somebody who at least had _seemed_ to have answers.

Every once in a while, he mourned, and that was all, and it ached like an old wound that had long-since scarred.

“I’m so sorry,” Q returned, with a smile that he hoped didn’t seem condescending or – Merlin forbid – pitying. Sherlock had absolutely no patience for pity, and certainly not where their parents were concerned.

Sherlock shrugged sideways, and returned a very small smile of his own, before his attention returned to the computer in front of him.

Q, meanwhile, headed to find Mycroft: “They want you, more than anyone, even more than Sherlock, I think…”

Mycroft had the audacity to look smug. “And so they should,” he said simply. “I am by far the greatest current risk to the Death Eaters, and they are extremely aware of my previous ventures into the realms of immorality. I am a Pureblood Slytherin, and an extraordinary wizard; naturally, they are interested.”

“Your modesty is as astounding as ever,” Q noted drily. “Alright then. And you’re okay with this? You realise this?” 

“They would be foolish not to,” Mycroft replied, a little more gently. “It was one of the major contributory factors in your incarceration, as I understand; the Death Eaters were rather insistent in attempting to contact me, with regards to you. I must say, I am rather impressed that even under interrogation, you gave them nothing to work from. Surely the telephones…”

“They asked the wrong questions,” Q interjected. “Sheer fluke, they used Veritaserum and good old-fashioned torture… honestly, just luck.”

Mycroft watched him for a long moment, and nodded slightly, with just the shadow of something in his expression that Q was definitely not happy about.

Then, there was Bond.

Since the rather disastrous attempt on both of their parts to communicate, it had been hard. Q wanted, very badly, or it to simply be _done_. The conversations to happen and for life to return to normal, because every part of everything of him loved James Bond, and _missed him_.

Yet, Silva’s voice played in his ear, and that memory was enough to throttle the other dozens of memories that composed Q’s view of Bond. It shouldn’t have tarnished them, Q _knew_ that, but rationality had died after several months in perpetual pain with nobody coming to save him.

“I killed people, yes,” Bond told him, rather abruptly. “Many people. Innocent people. I had sex with more people I could count, I caused the deaths of others, and I followed orders. I’m not expecting to be forgiven.”

Q’s body reacted before his mind did, a buzz of shock. “You…”

“Yes,” Bond told him, and the simplicity was somehow calming. “Before I knew you, and before I started teaching, I was an extremely different person.”

“You were my age,” Q pointed out, brows contracted in something like confusion. “You must have been…”

“I believed I was doing the greatest amount of good I could for a country and world I care about,” Bond told him. He wasn’t trying to beg forgiveness or deny anything, something that Q found very encouraging. “The things I did…”

Q interrupted, voice slightly strangled. “I always assumed you didn’t talk about it because of what you’d seen, not because you’d _done_.”

“At first I wasn’t. Vesper…”

The name caused a flicker of remembrance, Q inhaling suddenly as his ring burned hot on his finger and he remembered her voice, voice of reason and calm, for some inexplicable reason keeping him from too-great harm. “She was there.”

Bond froze. Everything in him froze. “In Malfoy Manor?”

Q nodded, uncertain of how to _begin_ explaining her actions. “She was odd,” he managed after a moment, words finding him again. “Returned my wedding ring, she stopped them torturing me as badly…”

“She…?” Bond interrupted, his breathing unsteady, tense, trailing off, jaw set in a hard line; he took a breath, let it out slowly, controlled. “No explanation?”

“No,” Q replied, Bond’s reaction making him unpleasantly wary. “But… she was interested _because_ of me. Another person who wants me because of you, James, and I can’t… I know it was Mycroft, too. When I was in Malfoy Manor, I know it was because of Mycroft and Sherlock, they said as much…”

Bond was stonily, terrifyingly silent, and Q just continued with a touch of frantic desperation: “… but Silva and Vesper, they, they were because of you James so I need to know, I need to know whether there are any other skeletons in other bloody closets that are going to come back to haunt me, and I need to know you’re not that person any more.”

“Do you really think I am?” Bond snapped, making Q flinch in spite of his best efforts, cursing under his breath at his instincts. “Sorry…”

“Don’t be,” Q interjected, irritably.

The pair stood in silence, trying to find words to bridge the gulf that seemed to have opened between them, failing utterly.

Either way, life had to trickle along, and Q found himself working through correspondence to international associates with Sherlock on the laptop next to him, Q’s brow contracted with effort as he scanned through papers and made notes on a notebook he’d had since he was twelve.

“Oh fuck,” Sherlock swore aloud, making Q jump. “Oh _fuck_. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ fuck.”

Q, naturally, couldn’t help but come over and see what in the hell was going on. “Oh, _fuck_ ,” he repeated, barely breathing. “Fuck… _Mycroft_.”

To his tremendous irritation, Q could feel the earliest threads of a panic attack; on screen, matters had shifted into something Q had never imagined even Moriarty would slip to, and it was terrifying, horrific.

Q bent over and retched, just as Mycroft entered the room.

The feel of hands on him was enough to send Q careening over the edge into hyperventilating, his body shaking out of control and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t bear the warmth of strong hands trying to turn him over, trying to move him, and he let out a whimper and hated himself for it, curling up tighter as voices played out above him.

On screen, Sherlock had been watching a Muggle Studies class. He had a morbid fascination with the class now, as somebody who considered himself closer to Muggle than Wizard.

Abruptly, Sherlock had watched a victim hauled into the centre of a class for a practical demonstration by none other than Jim Moriarty, and Sherlock had promptly reacted in the histrionic way only Sherlock could manage.

A live Muggle victim was being studied.

Q had, meanwhile, descended into a truly stunning panic attack. His first, as it happened; he was not prone to panic attacks in the slightest, regardless of previous experiences, and it seemed stunningly unfair that it was only now that he was getting them.

It was a strange semi-balance between people flocking to see the screen, and trying to uncomfortably work out what to do with Q, given that it was difficult to feel anything more than a complete twat when watching somebody descend into hysteria and not doing anything about it.

John appeared mercifully quickly, not with potions as Q had expected, but simple Muggle valium; Q would later be informed that tranquillising potions could interfere with the pain potions, and so John had broken into his store of Muggle drugs.

To be quite frank, Q didn’t care so long as it all stopped. Everything was spinning, crazed circles and screaming running through his body, his blood, everything screaming at an inhuman pitch and it _hurt_ , all of it hurt more than Q knew it could.

Inch by inch, the panic faded back, slowed and stilled into nothing, and Q was left with a bone-deep exhaustion and an absolutely desperate need to find out what was happening on screen. Bond, John and Mycroft were the ones who were looking after him – Bond’s familiar smell, Mycroft’s voice, John’s simple pragmatism – and they tried to keep him back, tried to keep him away.

Nobody wanted to let him get anywhere the screen, either way, given his previous reaction.

“It was just the shock. Sherlock had panicked, and then somebody was touching and I couldn’t see who,” Q explained, his heartbeat still far too loud in his throat, stripped raw. “I swear I’m alright, I’m alright, I just need a moment and I’ll be fine, I promise, I just need to know what’s going on. Please. Let me see.”

There was no power on earth that would have stopped him either way. Mycroft was the one to relent, moving out of the way so Q could join Sherlock, most of the Weasleys and now Mycroft in examining the events playing out.

Q couldn’t stop his hand from shaking. It was getting extremely annoying. Q moderated his breathing as best he was able, and watched.

The Muggle was being humiliated. A young man, maybe mid-twenties, and he was being paraded like some form of show animal, Moriarty demonstrating the ease of Imperiusing a Muggle and making him dance, making him grovel in submission and Moriarty’s lips were readable, the Carrows crowing. No audio still, but the film was more than enough to show all of it in excruciating detail.

Of all things Q had seen in Hogwarts, this ranked amongst the worst. This was too far, infinitely too far by anybody’s standards, and the students were crying and panicking and trying to hide it from the simple sadism of people entrusted with _teaching_.

“We need to intervene,” Sherlock said aloud, his voice barely audible. “This is… this is disgusting. We cannot allow children to be swayed by this type of view, we cannot…”

Mycroft’s voice was heavy: “We are in no position to bring down Hogwarts at the moment,” he stated, with tangible sadness. “The Death Eaters, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, they are still in full force with no signs of slowing their progression. If we attempted anything in Hogwarts, we stand to risk the lives of the students.”

“And what will they do to me?” Sherlock snapped, body shaking violently, quick as Q’s heart was beating. “When they get hold of me, what will they do?”

Nobody could answer. “It’s not a case of ‘when’,” Bond said carefully. “They won’t. HQ is safe, we know you’re a high-risk…”

Sherlock slammed his chair back, and stormed out of the room.

Everybody waited for John to follow; Sherlock was his fiancé after all, and nobody could deal with Sherlock better than John could. Sherlock would be frantic and frightened and would never admit to either, but Q _knew_ , everybody did.

John, however, was paralysed. He watched the screen almost expressionlessly, no sign of life barring intermittent blinks, the slight twitch of tension in wrought-out muscles.

It would be him, if the Death Eaters ever got hold of him. This was what the Death Eaters thought of him, and they would tear him to pieces in a heartbeat if it suited, when it suited. He, like Sherlock, lived on the edges of terror, waiting for the impending chaos and knowing he would never survive. Others stood at least a chance of life, if all of this ended in the wrong direction.

Sherlock, John; they would both die, and it would not be quick, and that was a hard thing to make peace with.

The Muggle was panicking, crying, and Q gagged violently and his body was definitely not working, definitely not doing what he needed it too, as his pulse rocketed once again and he tried to think, tried and tried to just _think_ , and his brain was pulsing red-hot spikes into his brain.

Thus, Q stood with as much poise and balance as he could feasibly muster, and headed out of the room to find Sherlock. Mercifully, the man hadn’t made it especially far; Q hit into him just on the stairs, where Sherlock had apparently made it before collapsing. Sherlock was just attempting to regain posture when Q found him, desperately trying to ensure nobody saw him as weak.

Q mutely sat by him, not touching, and there were no words for any of it.

Neither was there to see Jim’s smile, the moment before the screen flashed green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay in this update :) hope you enjoyed, your thoughts are perpetually welcome! Jen.


	27. Chapter 27

The moment Q could walk around, boredom hit with a ferocious vengeance: within days, he had himself involved in absolutely everything he could be.

For example: Q discovered that Order had set up a pro-resistance radio station, and their security was _atrocious_. Frankly, Q was surprised they hadn’t been raided already.

It led Q to a mass overhaul of their systems with unapologetic speed and precision, the programme only off-air for a single day while Q dealt with it. “You do realise that now, you don’t actually have to worry about passwords?” Q explained, when all was wrapped up. “This is something fantastic – don’t let it come off air. Broadcast all hours if you have to, but keep that voice for people to hook into when everything’s turning to shit.”

There were a few exchanged glances, before Fred Weasley looked him up and down. “Want to be a host?” 

-

It was an absolute delight to run into Lee Jordan again; he had vanished along with everybody else who sympathised with the Order, and had been the general spokesperson for Potterwatch since its inception.

With Q’s new initiative to have the programme running day and night from a secure location, they would need more people. They started forming shift patterns for running the newfound twenty-four hour station, which found Lee, the Weasley twins, Luna, Ginny, Sherlock, Q and John being regular hosts for different shifts. It was an excellently varied collection, and led to some fantastically different types of broadcasts.

Q had never done anything like it in his life, and wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It was mostly just odd, and did put something of strain on him given the amount of other Order work he was also doing.

He did it anyway, mostly because he was having trouble sleeping, and this gave him something concrete to fill the endless waking hours. The station now played Muggle and Wizarding music alike, updates were given, interviews and news and reports from across their worlds.

Luna was probably Q’s favourite, simply because she was absolutely mad and didn’t apologise for it. She was fun and light and airy in a way nobody else was, a light in the dark of the world outside. Recipes for Plimpy soup and discussions on the nature of Bloggarts – a sister species of Boggarts who shifted into one’s favourite things instead – were so far removed that it couldn’t help but be a tonic. Not to mention that she had the most eccentric music tastes of anybody Q had ever known.

The Weasley twins were a louder type of humour, as was Lee Jordan, but they were humorous all the same. Q was of a more serious and shy nature, Ginny was sharp and sarcastic, and then there was John.

Within a couple of weeks, John’s shifts became an absolute smash hit. John spoke about the Muggle world with more clarity than anybody before, a deliberate hit back at the anti-Muggle propaganda that was flooding the Wizarding world. He spoke on the developments in Muggle technology, the ways in which Muggle techniques had informed Wizarding developments, Muggle medicine and the ability of Muggles to make potions, potentially become involved in any number of Wizarding endeavours.

Sherlock was a less frequent contributor, but truly monumental when he was. A wizard and Muggle alike, he was prepared to talk without censor about how to live and survive in a world without magic, and – for the first time – spoke about his time in the Ministry in one extraordinary session in the middle of February, with John interviewing him.

“As all wizards know, magical abilities become evident through childhood, and into puberty,” he explained, voice level and only slightly edged with anger. “This ability can, however, be channelled in ways that safe and do not cause harm to physical and mental faculties of a given person.”

“You developed an addiction to Muggle drugs during your teenage years – was this connected to your attempted control over your magic?” John asked, tone slightly merciless.

Sherlock replied without hesitation: “At that time, no,” he said easily. “In fact, while I have no doubt that it tempered some of my magic, it was certainly not necessary, as my years post-drugs would indicate. However, later on, I relapsed due to emotional strain, and discovered that it stopped my magical outbursts altogether.”

“What happened in the Ministry of Magic, during your time in the custody of the Department of Mysteries?”

A slow breath, and Q wondered – listening raptly, as everybody was – whether Sherlock would actually answer.

“At the stage of my incarceration, the Department had long-since been infiltrated by Death Eater sympathisers,” he explained carefully. “I was subjected to forms of torture, ostensibly tests to understand and appreciate what form of disability had caused my aversion to magic. There was an attempt to ‘heal’ me of that aversion, which involved uses of potions and spellwork intended to break down my degree of control over my own magic.”

Sherlock paused a moment, and all listeners seemed to suspend for a moment, engrossed. “The testing came to very little; it was not a fault in myself that gave me the choice to not use magic. The break came when people I cared for were threatened and indeed actively hurt, and the strain – in conjunction with the mental and physical torture preceding it – caused what I can only describe as a shattering. Ever since, I have not had physical control over my magic, which is now consistently triggered through any form of emotional peaks; I was forced to learn spellwork, as the only way to safely channel my magic.”

“Did you want to learn magic?”

Again, Sherlock didn’t hesitate, and his answer broke Q’s heart a little: “No. I have no choice. I will now always need to use magic. I still have difficulty expunging the energy, from time to time; I stand to cause far too many people harm, if I cannot release it.”

The silence rang, and every single listener hung on that silence, as John let the statements sink in. “Thank you, Sherlock,” he said quietly, eventually, before returning to the listeners. “Listeners, this is the type of human cost that Death Eaters are causing. This is not just about the casualties, but the lives of those still living that have been irreparably damaged. We are all human, magic or not. Thank you for listening, and I’m going to hand over to everybody’s favourite comedy duo.”

The Weasley twins took over, and Q let out a slow breath, wishing there was anything he could do for his brother and knowing – with awful clarity – that there was nothing.

Potterwatch had debated code names, but really, it seemed a little redundant. Everybody knew who was in the Order, they were all in hiding, and now that the station was safe from Death Eater intervention, everybody openly stated their places and stopped hiding in the shadows. Those supporting the Resistance needed to know those who were making changes, and the Order just became bolder as time ticked on.

“James, go away,” Q asked tiredly, as Bond appeared in the doorway.

Of course, he didn’t. He placed a tea by Q and his endless piles of paper, and simply said: “If I was the same person, I would never have loved you. You certainly would never have loved me, I can assure you of that.”

Next to the drink, he placed a large, bound folder. “Everything I’ve been,” he said quietly, Q’s glanced darting between him and it, uncertain. “That should give you an idea of whether… of _what_ … I’ve done, and who in this world might still hold enough against me to hurt either of us.”

He didn’t say another word, just left the folder on the desk, and walked away. Q didn’t watch him go, eyes fixed on the large and so nearly innocuous folder with _007_ emblazoned over the front.

-

Matters became considerably more exciting when the Order was contacted by Aberforth Dumbledore.

It turned out that the man possessed a portrait. A portrait that connected his inn to Hogwarts itself, directly into the Room of Requirement if it was in a certain state, a passageway which meant some could perhaps be smuggled out and – far more importantly – they could break _in_.

“We will not be attempting a Hogwarts break-in until we are in a place to shelter those we can extract,” Mycroft explained, “and not jeopardise the safety of those students remaining there. It may be sensible, for example, for students to remain within the Room of Requirement until such a time as the Room has been made safe and secure.”

“The passageway only appears when the Room is secured with friendly people,” Aberforth grunted; they had met with Aberforth in a safe house in Yorkshire, away from prying eyes. “Unless some students go in…”

“… we can’t get to them,” Q completed, with a heavy sigh. It meant they were waiting on some student somewhere to find shelter in the Room, and there weren’t many who knew about it; some of the DA would know, of course, but beyond that it was a little unlikely.

Mycroft was watching Aberforth, quietly and heavily curious: “As a point of interest, why contact us?” he asked, betraying a heavy layer of suspicion, almost anticipation.

Aberforth looked at him, unintimidated, an equal to Mycroft in every regard. “I had a younger sister, once,” he explained quietly. “She lost control of her magic, as Sherlock did, only she was a lot younger. I heard the broadcast.”

“Ariana,” Mycroft murmured.

Aberforth nodded. “I loved her. I don’t like to take sides, all this isn’t my business, but I don’t like to see kids getting hurt or people be treated like that.”

Mycroft nodded his understanding. Q, meanwhile, couldn’t help but ask: “What happened to her?”

“She died,” Aberforth replied, without hesitation. “Caught in the crossfire, a duel, and she lost control. It was an accident, she couldn’t… she killed our mother. An accident. She would never’ve hurt anybody…”

Mycroft nodded, while Q just froze. “We should go,” Mycroft told him quietly, and Q nodded, bidding Aberforth a farewell – he returned the words with an odd grunt of his own – and turning on the spot.

Apparating was still painful. Being out of Skyfall was painful, actually, with the threat looming of Silva’s return or the Death Eaters finding them. Q’s scars were deeper than flesh, and he simply tried to remain calm while working through everything he could.

In lieu of anything else being done, everybody waited for news of Harry Potter. He remained the ultimate emblem of the Resistance, and the constant lack of sightings was becoming deeply worrying. There was no doubt the Death Eaters would have widely publicised his death, but there was still a substantial chance that he had been just a quieter casualty, slid out of life when nobody was looking. Were it not for Ron’s assertions over Christmas that he was alive, the Order would have certainly begun losing hope.

Muggles were meanwhile sustaining very heavy casualties, yet still had no idea about the Wizarding world as a whole. John was very careful, in his broadcasts, to emphasise that Muggle and Wizarding worlds would need to remain separate for the sake of peace, regardless of their ability to coexist; it was more a case of removing the sense of superiority, of dominance, and emphasise that human life mattered more than Wizarding or Muggle status.

It was getting increasingly difficult to protect any of them. Q was desperately working to find some way to get Muggleborns and sympathisers out of the country, and other than some fairly useful contacts around the Channel Tunnel, it was coming to naught.

Part of the problem was communicating with international allies. Owls were risky for a number of reasons – security, and being recognised – which meant that while everybody sent their owls on missions, there was a perpetual risk that they would never come back.

Scamander, for example, came home injured at one stage, bleeding badly from one wing. Q was naturally devastated – Scamander had been a part of his life for as long as Q could remember – and took a decent amount of care afterwards. Myrmidon was a very skilled dodger of spells, but Sherlock’s Darwin less so; Q discovered that he had been lost somewhere in January, had simply never come back.

“He’s doing better,” Bond coaxed, as Q stroked through Scamander’s feathers.

Q voice was quiet, as he spoke: “It’s always the little things.”

The little things, like the fact that Whisp remained a sad and tranquil grey these days, that Scamander was hurt, that Q still couldn’t sleep in the same bed as Bond and was exhausted but sleep refused to come. In Luna having red-rimmed eyes from crying, and Ollivander still unable to bear being alone with anybody.

Bond nodded. “It’s always like that,” he murmured. “You don’t think about the deaths, you can’t… I always read that Unforgivable Curses damage the soul, and I didn’t believe it until I’d been in the Department for months… I was too far gone.”

“What do you mean?” Q asked, with a quiet sound of something like desperation. 

Bond pretended not to notice, continued to speak, his voice level. “Killing splits the soul into pieces,” he stated frankly. “Torturing them, abusing them in those ways… the soul splinters or breaks apart completely. You can’t see it, but it’s there, and Dark magic becomes…”

“… easier,” Q completed, with awful quiet, his heart beating too-loudly in his throat.

Bond simply nodded. “I shredded my soul beyond repair,” he explained softly. “It keeps spiralling. It’s simple, in a way, and you feel so much power in it. Control. I only realised it was a problem because of the little things; the things you stop noticing.”

“Like?”

“Like the Muggle girl who was in the corner when you killed her parents, and you didn’t notice,” Bond told him. “The fact that you stop _caring_ about anything. I have nothing left.”

Q’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. “You care about me,” he pointed out.

Bond’s expression was utterly haunted. “Supposedly, you can heal a damaged soul.”

“How?”

Q’s voice was too sharp, too insistent, to be ignored; Bond looked at him with something that mercifully stopped short of being pity, and lingered, assessing. “Remorse,” he said eventually. “True remorse. Albus thought acts of love, pure love, might also… help, I suppose, but I do wonder if he said that for my benefit. I don’t feel remorse.”

It was impossible to stall the slight recoil, the quiet horror at the statement. “ _Why?_ ”

“I did what I thought was right,” Bond explained simply. “I can’t be remorseful – I couldn’t have done differently, and the things I did _were_ for the ‘greater good’”.

The last words were spat with a contempt Q barely recognised on Bond’s lips.

Both were quiet for a moment.

“I don’t regret it either,” Q told him softly, pain riddling him, drawn in the bowed lines of his body as he thought and felt, lived the surge of power and ecstasy under his skin. “I don’t regret torturing him.”

Bond didn’t say anything. He extended his arms out, instead, an open invitation.

Q didn’t think he could do it. Let himself fall into Bond’s arms, be held, be loved. Feel safe.

He did, all the same.

-

Late February, and Ollivander was once again able to speak to people, was recovering in tangible increments and returning to his old self. He remained in Skyfall for his own safety, but the Order – when they could – brought him equipment for wandwork. He began crafting wands once again, and the act of doing so seemed to be immensely calming for him.

Q wasn’t sure whether he was getting better, or just delaying an inevitable breakdown. For the sake of his sanity, he decided not to examine it too closely.

“I’m going home,” Luna said softly, sat in the living room by Q, nursing an exceptionally large mug of hot chocolate that John had made for her. “Daddy is safe. I’ll come back to do Potterwatch I think, but I need to be home, Daddy wants to show me the Erumpent horn. Mr Ollivander made me a new wand too, but I’m not sure I like it yet.”

Q would miss her beyond anything he could express. “I can understand that,” he said quietly. “You’ll be incredibly missed. Don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Luna’s smile was bright, somehow, and she always seemed to be like that, even when she had been crying or hurt, she somehow stayed with a lightness of future outlook.

Her leaving led to something of a regression on Q’s part. Luna had been a touchstone, a note of clarity when memory broke over his head and threatened to swallow him, and Mycroft was abruptly accosted with Q for most hours of the day and night.

Q still couldn’t work out why he couldn’t manage being around Bond for long periods. There seemed no true reason for it, and it frustrated him beyond all measure; he wanted his husband back, the safety Bond offered him and the love that rang through everything of him but Q still couldn’t manage it, couldn’t force the motion to start. Small starts led to setbacks led to attempts and failures, and Q was trying, he truly was.

Bond, to his credit, was unbelievably patient. It was evident that he didn’t understand, that he was deeply hurt, but he respected Q all the same and didn’t try to push anything.

Yet, as February slipped into March, Q couldn’t help but wonder what had shifted so much that time didn’t seem to be healing it fully.

March brought with it the Hogwarts Easter holiday, the discovery that Bathilda Bagshot was very much dead and had been for a while, and Hagrid’s unfortunate decision to host a “Support Harry Potter” party which had ended up with him on the run, and a good host of students being punished.

“… and it would seem that the rumours of You-Know-Who’s sightings are all unconfirmed and frankly bizarre; by all accounts, he has been sighted across the UK uncountable times, and even abroad. I would suggest everybody calming down about it, given that if he’s behind you, you’ll be dead long before you can consider it further. Now, enough on that for a while, and let’s have some music from the Muggle realms. Ladies and gentleman, I bring you the Spice Girls.”

Q sat back, listening happily to the Spice Girls (and frankly not caring how many people took the piss out of him for it), and smiled at Lupin, who he would be interviewing at the end of the song.

It was only three hours later, when the news hit that Harry, Hermione and Ron were in Shell Cottage.

And, to Q’s utter grief, Dobby the House Elf had died.


	28. Chapter 28

“Ladies and gentleman, I have the best news possible: _Harry Potter is alive!!_

Potterwatch had a party. It didn’t matter whether the Death Eaters heard or not – after all, they knew Harry was alive anyway – and now, everybody in the Resistance movement knew that their emblem was alive and well and safe, at least for a while.

Harry himself had changed almost beyond recognition. Quieter, older than Q had ever seen him, far beyond his years. Hermione had been tortured, which meant she was transported over to Skyfall for John to look after her, and Ron was none the worse for wear but deliriously happy to be reunited with his family.

The relief was indescribable. It meant the end was still possible. Harry had an evident plan and knew more than the Order did, but it was fine, given that the Order had enough to be working on and could merrily continue as they had been.

There were some other factors. Dean Thomas, and Griphook – a goblin Q had never met before – had also been subjected to the anger of Malfoy Manor. Griphook had his legs entirely destroyed, required Skele-Gro and a good deal of care. John called in Molly Hooper for assistance, and she more than happily popped back to Skyfall to offer assistance on all fronts.

Dean was mostly fine, but had been on the run for a good while. Mostly, he was tired, and missed his family a good deal; after running, he had needed to be separated, and now was just darting wherever he could find safety.

Harry – upon his arrival in Skyfall – utterly refused to give away any details of his mission. Instead, he demanded to speak to Griphook, and Ollivander the moment he established that Ollivander was in Skyfall.

“Harry, what’s going on?” Q asked, looking over Harry, his hands still stained with dirt from digging Dobby’s grave; apparently he had done so by hand. “How did you get out?”

Q couldn’t believe the depth of grief in Harry’s eyes, the urgency burning beneath his skin. “Dobby Disapparated, the spells didn’t hold a House Elf,” he said, voice bitten-off. “Bellatrix threw a knife as he was Disapparating, and it hit. Excuse me, I need to talk to Griphook.”

With that, he disappeared away, and Q recognised his need to be left for a little while. Whatever he needed, Q could not supply in that moment, and so he didn’t try; Harry would talk when he could, if he could, and that would have to be enough.

Meanwhile, Q went to speak to Hermione. He had always been very fond of her – very studious, earnest, honest – and she had deserved better than being left to hands of Bellatrix for any time whatsoever. “So. You’ll love the security measures around the Order safehouses.”

Hermione smiled despite herself, her hair frizzing everywhere across the pillow. “Tell me,” she asked, a little hesitantly, and smiled with genuine enthusiasm as Q did just that.

They were interrupted by Harry, who was more concerned with getting Hermione and Ron to talk to Ollivander and Griphook; Hermione acceded without too much argument, and headed into the various rooms.

Skyfall became a little crowded once again, but it was entirely worth it for the sake of Harry’s safety. “Harry…”

“Draco looks awful,” Harry interrupted, before Q could get another word out. “I just… they’re making him into something he’s not, he looked so tired. Why isn’t he still with you?”

Q had forgotten: Harry knew of very little that had happened around the time of Bill and Fleur’s wedding, had been gone all that time. He knew nothing of Christmas or Q and Luna’s imprisonment, knew nothing of Draco’s re-capture by the Death Eaters or what Hogwarts was like.

“He was taken at the wedding,” Q explained quietly. “I saw him, a few months ago, and I know he’s struggling – but he will be alright. His parents are looking after him, both of them are alive. Draco will need support and help when this ends, but he will hopefully survive.”

Not the greatest vote of confidence, but Q didn’t know how to lie about it; Draco was not safe, nor would be for a while yet, but Q still harboured hope that he would live to the end of everything.

Harry just nodded, and walked out of the house into the driveway itself, looking out across the emptiness of the Scottish countryside.

All three refused to speak on Potterwatch, but then, that made sense. Potterwatch itself became excited and electric, and by increments, Harry began to regain some lightness in his expression.

“We lost a safehouse.”

Molly Hooper had Apparated into Skyfall, looking pale and desperate and something like hysterical; Irene was nowhere to be seen, was hopefully still safe in the Holmes estate, but had clearly seen too much.

Mycroft was the first to start the interrogation, unsurprisingly. “Which?”

“Shell Cottage.”

Everybody’s head snapped to Molly. “Where’re Bill and Fleur?” Ginny asked urgently, her hand trembling, and Molly didn’t answer. “ _Molly_.”

“I don’t know, they had some Muggles in the house, they’re all dead, I didn’t see them anywhere,” Molly was burbling, tears starting to fall down her face, trembling violently while Hermione covered her mouth with her hands, and Ron went utterly white. “They shattered the charms, I only just Disapparated in time, but the house was destroyed…”

Molly Weasley looked like she wanted to vomit, equally turning very pale, while Mol’s panic increased exponentially, and she was still shaking like a leaf. “Bond, we will need to investigate the remains,” Mycroft told him, in a closed voice. “I would prefer to remain static, and send out scouts to establish their whereabouts. Charlie, would you be willing to accompany?”

“Try and stop me,” he replied stiffly, and followed Bond out, Q watching on with a somewhat tight expression; he instinctively disliked when Bond went away on missions, given the inevitable danger of it.

John took the still-trembling other Molly away for a Calming Draft spiked hot chocolate, while Q headed to the Potterwatch base, interrupting a broadcast from Lee. “Urgent news,” he said roughly.

Lee nodded, expression falling. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to hand over to Q for breaking news.”

Q knew he was speaking too fast, almost tripping over words. “I regret to report the murder of several Muggleborns this morning, and I would ask you to mourn for them as we all will. In addition, we have lost track of Bill and Fleur Weasley – I would ask anybody who knows of their whereabouts to offer them safety and shelter until we are able to take them home. Be on your guards, the Death Eaters are becoming more rampant now.”

With that, he handed back over to Lee, who was gaping unapologetically. “… listeners, we will keep you posted on developments as they come to us, but please try and remain calm and cautious…”

Q came out, to find everybody in the kitchen, crowded around Lupin. “… you’ll be the godfather?” Lupin was saying to Harry, and Q gasped. “Q! Tonks had the baby, I’m a father, I’m a _father_. Healthy little boy, we’re calling him Ted…”

“It never rains, but it pours,” Arthur muttered to Q, who had absolutely no idea how to react with everything changing so quickly.

Everybody was excited, but the excitement was inevitably tempered by Bill and Fleur’s absence, and Lupin realised fairly quickly. “What’s happened?”

Mycroft explained rapidly, and Lupin’s jubilation faded back. “And there’s no word?” he confirmed, a little tensely, glancing between those present. “Should I…”

“No, go home to your wife and baby,” Mycroft insisted, with a smile that bordered on utterly honest – the man so rarely smiled that brightly – and shooed him away, while Lupin’s excitement came flooding back again and he allowed himself to not think too hard on something he could not help with. “We’ll send you updates. Be careful. They’re getting more skilled at breaking into these places.”

Lupin nodded, and Disapparated home within a handful of minutes. “Blimey,” Ron mumbled, and near enough collapsed into a kitchen chair.

Bond and Charlie didn’t arrive back for another few hours, by which stage the anticipation was curling in everybody’s stomachs, and the atmosphere could be cut with a knife. The emotional outpouring was enough to cause Q dizziness, disconcerted as his brain attempted to process far too much at once and failed miserably. John and Sherlock stayed with him, both doing an excellent job of remaining neutral while chaos erupted around them.

“There is no sign of their bodies,” Bond reported, when they both emerged. “Eight casualties, it looks like they were Muggle parents of wizards, and so knew of the Wizarding world. I’m fairly sure one or two were also actual wizards, but no sign of wands anywhere…”

Charlie interrupted: “We tried a scout for both of them, but couldn’t find any trace,” he stated roughly, the worry clouding his judgement. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t get in touch, a Patronus…”

“… would be blocked from entry into this building,” Q completed. “We’ll have to keep the phones on, in case they call or contact that way. I’m going to fortify our other safehouses, in case of further attacks, we can’t risk any more and they’re getting more daring. Those spells should have held.”

“Are you strong enough to travel?” Sherlock asked in a light drawl, clearly not believing he would be; Q raised a sceptical eyebrow, and nodded. “You’re barely able to get through days without panicking…”

“I resent that,” Q interrupted. “I’m fine. I’d prefer to make everybody safe.”

Q hadn’t noticed Hermione enter, only heard her voice. “I could come too, I’m good with defensive spells,” she pointed out. “And I can make sure you’re alright, if anything happens…”

“She’s really good,” Ron piped up, and it was actively endearing how much he cared about her, clearly liked her as more than a friend.

Harry, however, was quick to protest, somewhat unsurprisingly. “Hermione, you can’t go, you’re not well either and we need you here, Griphook…”

Hermione shook her head urgently, and everybody watched the exchange with tangible interest, Bond’s eyes narrowing as he looked over the three of them; there was something there he didn’t like, some form of dynamic with a creature they did not understand.

It was, of course, Mycroft’s decision in the end; he took a moment, considering variables, eventually answering steadily and slowly. “Your safety is important for the state of the Resistance,” he told Hermione, who couldn’t help but look disappointed for a moment. “However, it is indisputable that you are an excellent witch insofar as protective spellwork, as is evidenced by how long you were able to evade Death Eater attention.”

“Q explained the systems, it makes logical sense…”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow, and Hermione fell silent. “Go with him. Fortify everywhere you are able. John?”

John rolled his eyes slightly at Q’s idiocy, as he always tended to, and handed over another potion. “Should be enough to cover you for a few hours, but you come straight back if you get tired, dizzy or in pain,” he told him shortly, not believing for a moment that Q would be sensible about his own parameters.

“Will do,” Q lied brightly, and turned to Hermione. “You’re sure?”

Harry looked spectacularly unhappy, and Ron visibly worried. “I’m sure,” she replied, with careful gravity. “I want to help.”

“Me too,” Harry supplemented.

Almost in unison, near enough everybody said _no_. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mycroft told him dismissively, and returned attention to Q and Hermione while Harry unsubtly fumed. “Be careful, both of you.”

Q nodded, sparing a moment to watch Mycroft; he seemed troubled, in a way Q couldn’t quite understand or grasp.

He resolved to ask at a later stage, and – with Hermione in tow – headed outside. “We’ll need to use some side-along,” he explained, “given that you’ve not been to a few of the houses. After that point, just go with whatever I tell you, and if you see anything that could be a problem, Disapparate immediately and _do not_ wait to warn me.”

“I…”

“Promise me,” Q said sternly; Hermione hesitated for a moment, but conceded with a slow nod. “Good. Alright then. Hold onto my arm.”

Hermione nodded, and turned on the spot; Q waited just a moment before following suit.

The sensation, as always, was horrible. The last time Q had Apparated side-along, however, he’d been sporting several broken ribs and the after-effects of torture, so by comparison this was a lot friendlier.

All the same, he reeled slightly when they stilled, trying to collect his thoughts. “Are you alright?” Hermione asked urgently, while Q’s vision blurred a little, balance slipping away from him, nodding quickly. 

“Fine. Now, theoretically, you can get in; I’m assuming Mycroft told you the name?”

Hermione nodded, and Q thought to himself; tongue-tying was deeply impractical when Muggles and wizards alike were being harboured at short notice, but having the name flying about was equally dangerous. 

Thus, Q began to cast – with Hermione’s help – some overarching charms at a further distance. One of the spells Q had developed while working with the phones and indeed Potterwatch was a deflection spell, designed to displace the signal for anyone attempting to break into the wavelength.

Theoretically, Q figured, the same type of spell could be used to displace human beings from a certain location. It meant trying to find a loophole that connected with the Fidelius Charm, allowing those who knew the name to pass through without issue, and both Q and Hermione spent a couple of hours trying to work it out.

Their first attempt nearly catapulted them from the house. They tried again.

Eventually, they found something that seemed to hold. Hermione had integrated – with Q’s help – a variation on Muggle Repellant jinxes, which seemed to be having the desired effect of keeping all people at a distance. Q’s secondary charm made anybody attempting to Apparate around the house immediately become displaced into somewhere in the English countryside. 

“We need to test it,” Q muttered, pulling out a mobile and calling Bond. “Hi love, need you to test a charm. Could you possibly try and Apparate to the Holmes Manor?”

Bond did so without hesitation, and landed directly next to Q and Hermione. “That felt weird,” Bond muttered. “Like Apparating through treacle.”

“Ah,” Q muttered. “Didn’t think that through. Alright: James, go back. I’m going lift the spell that links in to the Fidelius charm, and see if it’ll work as it would for outsiders.”

Bond did as bidden – he evidently didn’t really understand what was being said, but went with it anyway – and Hermione helped Q hold the charm at bay; it was a real faff to try and take it off altogether, so she simply held the spell in temporary stasis to be released in a few minutes. Q called Bond. “Try for me?”

Q waited. Hermione waited. Nothing happened.

Q’s phone rang. “Hello?” he asked, with palpable excitement.

“ _Where the hell am I?!_ ”

Hermione and Q shared a high-five, and in Q’s case a small whoop of triumph. “Good question. Go home, I’ll see you there,” he said happily, and hung up. “Okay. Hermione, pop it back in place. They shouldn’t really be able to get anywhere even slightly near the house without being directly told by Mycroft now, so I’m happy with that. Let’s try another.”

They headed to Tonks’s house next; inside, Tonks was curled up with a baby, looking exceptionally tired. Remus stood by her, beaming like the sun itself, watching his child and his wife with a type of suspended rapture. “Isn’t he perfect?” he breathed to Q, who grinned and nodded, kissing Tonks on the forehead and congratulating them both.

“I’m going to pop some more security measures around the house, if you don’t mind?” he asked, with everybody agreeing instantly. “I’ll be a little while, and then I’ll need to get back, I’m knackered already.”

Tonks reached out to him, and Q moved closer; he hadn’t seen Tonks since his return, with her unable to Apparate. She looked beautiful, hair a gorgeous shade of pink, smiling with the distant wonder of a new mother. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she told Q simply. “You were missed, you know. Sorry I couldn’t come and see you…”

“Don’t be daft,” Q assured her, stroking a finger along her child’s nose, unable to stop himself smiling as Teddy yawned, and turned over in his mother’s arms. “I’m so happy for you, you have no idea.”

“You next,” she said with a wink, and Q felt the bottom briefly drop out of his stomach.

Hermione cooed over the child, while Q headed towards the outside of the house, a duck pond sitting obnoxiously in the centre. The house was fairly secure – Tonks and Remus had clearly added a few quirks of their own – but it would do no harm to add a few more. Q, as Quartermaster, possessed the knowledge of every safe house the Order had; he would be able to nip in anywhere, amend what was necessary.

“Can I help?”

Remus stood in the doorway, a type of tranquil calm across his features that Q couldn’t quite believe was there. “If you like,” he replied lightly, and explained what he was doing; Lupin nodded, drawing his wand and following Q’s example, sending warm light across the darkening sky.

“Are you alright?”

Q glanced towards him, and wondered how to answer. “It’s odd,” he said carefully, diplomatically. “I’m still getting used to all of it… trying to make things make sense again… I don’t know, it’s weird.”

Remus nodded, with quiet understanding. “There are some events that change everything you know about your world,” he murmured. “It gets easier, but never quite goes away.”

“Like you being bitten, I assume?” Q asked, not bothering with subtlety; everybody knew of Remus’s condition, of his fears, of everything.

He nodded, with a type of flickering sadness and anger. “It haunts, and I hate it,” he said frankly. “I hate it every single month, and will do until the day I die, but there’s bugger all I can do but manage it as best I can.”

Q nodded his understanding, and they both stood in silence for a moment, watching the webbing of spellwork crease the sky. “I want to be normal.”

Remus didn’t answer, and Q already knew what his reply would be if he did. Instead they stayed for another moment of silence, before Remus abruptly broke it with “how did you manage to not tell them about any of the safehouses?”

For a moment, Q was genuinely confused. “Well…” he trailed off, eyebrows contracted with something like confusion. “Well. They never asked the right questions, really. They went on about getting into HQ, but not quite other places, and by the time the Veritaserum wore off…”

“They used Veritaserum, and you still didn’t tell them anything?” Lupin asked, with something close to alarm. “That’s… odd, I must admit. So you, what, used verbal loopholes?”

“Yeah, near enough,” Q shrugged, and felt his pulse start to increase as he remembered more, hammering sharply in his throat. “It’s fine. Done now. All gone.”

Remus seemed to realise Q was reaching the end of his capabilities, and mercifully stopped asking questions. Q breathed. Hermione emerged from the house, all but squeaking with excitement over the child indoors. “He’s _gorgeous_ ,” she gushed to Remus, whose mood once again sailed upwards with the thought of his child, his baby boy. “I’m so happy for you both, so happy…”

“Hermione, we should head back,” Q told her lightly; he would have loved to do more, but panic was started to eat away at him, and he needed home and safety and his family and James.

He needed Bond more than anything in that moment, actually.

The realisation was enough to make Q almost giddy with joy; it was coming back, whatever he had lost over the last year was coming back and with it, his ability to calm, to be back with his husband and start to rebuild. It was all getting better.

Hermione and Q Apparated back into Skyfall. Hermione immediately started talking ten to the dozen about spells and babies and excitement, Harry – and particularly Ron – listening with rapt attention, along with a very tearful Molly Weasley and a rather broody-looking Ginny.

Q just headed straight for Bond, and sank into him, letting Bond hold him with the strong scent of burnt toffee and heat. “All done?” Bond asked him warmly.

“Yeah,” Q murmured, eyes closed, and kept a lid on the creeping and exciting and _terrifying_ thought that had needled its way under his skin, was why he had spent a day insistently increasing security and testing spells, testing and testing.

It was difficult to sleep, and he didn’t need to for the moment, his mind was _buzzing_ : if he could reverse the spells that were deflecting Apparition, if he could – in fact – find a way to charm oneself in such a way that it had the _opposite_ effect, then maybe, just _maybe_ , he could find a way to defy Anti-Apparition spells.

Q was finding a way to break into Hogwarts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my love for you darlings supporting this story, after all this time. Jen.


	29. Chapter 29

Sherlock had vanished.

Honestly, it didn’t come as a surprise, not to Q at any rate. Sherlock had been told about the meeting with Aberforth, and had been waiting to go ever since; he wanted to go into Hogwarts more than words could express, trying with ever-increasing fervour to stop what they were doing. He didn’t care about Harry Potter, or the war really.

He cared about John, and the world he and John inhabited. The Wizarding world was an unfortunate interference; Sherlock simply wanted _his_ world to survive.

Aberforth’s story concerning Ariana had sunk into Sherlock like nothing anybody had imagined. It was widely known that he had got in touch after Sherlock’s radio broadcast; Sherlock had inspired him to contact, to offer help to others who might have understood his sister.

Sherlock and Aberforth had begun to speak to one another. Aberforth was supplied with a mobile phone – he blinked at it, but impressively enough made no comment – and he and Sherlock began an intermittent dialogue.

It had been going on for a couple of weeks, and nobody thought much of it, beyond the fact that Sherlock was enjoying having an external contact.

“You already knew you’d never be able to stay in the Muggle world again, given your lack of control,” Mycroft pointed out, with his customary lack of empathy. “How is her story such a profound shock? You nearly died yourself, in the Ministry.”

Sherlock looked back at him, eyes dark with sublimated anger, and didn’t have a reply. He had hoped, hoped and _hoped_ , that he wouldn’t have to remain magic forever, in spite of nearly two years living in a Wizarding household, with the aspects of wizardry that truly benefited him.

This was not him, and this was not what he wanted, and Sherlock – in all his glorious stubbornness – would always want to go back.

Not to mention that he was afraid, and he would never admit it, even if Q could see it. Q had always been more emotionally adept than his siblings, and could recognise the simple threads of fear in Sherlock’s eyes: if he lost control, his magic not controlled _enough_ , if anger or hate or pain came back then he could hurt people. He looked at John with a fear of loss so profound it ached, memories of the time he had hospitalised John through something as simple as joy.

Sherlock left with no warning. Skyfall merely woke to find echoing quiet, John waking from a drug-induced sleep and finding his partner gone, his engagement ring and folded parchment on the desk.

John immediately summoned everybody in the vicinity, yelling hoarsely as he scanned through the note.

_Your life for mine. I have accepted the offer. Goodbye, John._

Nothing more. Sherlock had left with nothing more than that. “You believe it?” John asked Mycroft, who had gone rather pasty. “Do you think he’d have done something that stupid?”

Mycroft was quiet for a long moment, and Q held his breath and couldn’t help but feel extremely dizzy, Bond’s hand on his arm holding him in place. “The options are simple,” he said slowly, carefully. “Either, this is true, or he has attempted the inevitable ill-conceived attempt to bring down Hogwarts.”

“He wouldn’t do it alone, surely?” Bond asked.

Only, Sherlock would. Sherlock was the type of idiot, arrogant idiot, to do precisely that, and there was still a chance that the note was true and Sherlock had actually sacrificed himself. Both options seemed somehow implausible, not truly how Sherlock would behave, and _Merlin_ but Q couldn’t believe this was happening.

John had fallen into a chair, and was now blinking languidly, utterly silent.

“John…”

Violently, John shook his head. He did not want sympathy, or placating words, or somebody trying to make it better. His fiancé had gone into the hands of people who would torture and kill him, and John was going insane.

Of course, everybody flocked to watch the Hogwarts footage in the hope of finding where he was. “I didn’t even know he could Apparate,” Hermione said quietly.

The trio had been watching Hogwarts footage as much as they could, all with tangible horror, speaking to Ginny and Luna – who came back to Skyfall to see them – and getting stories of everything that had happened in their absence.

They also started to look at Q with something like pity, which meant Q was inches away from committing homicide, ‘boy who lived’ or not.

Mycroft was still dangerously tense as he watched with the others. “Of course Sherlock could Apparate – determination, destination, deliberation,” he said harshly. “All three of which Sherlock has in abundance.”

Ginny had Apparated to Hogsmeade to find Aberforth and establish what had happened; it transpired that the man had used a damned camera – Q cursed smart phones with everything in his soul – to photograph the location and send it to Sherlock. It was enough to have allowed him to Apparate.

It was somehow unsurprising that Sherlock had managed it. “Can we get through the portrait after him?”

Mycroft twisted to Q, eyes blazing. “For the final time: we are not attempting an assault on Hogwarts in our present state. There are more pressing concerns, and we cannot risk the safety of those around us, we are running an operation to protect Muggles and Wizards alike. If we enter Hogwarts, we stand to lose everything. We do not have the manpower, and we will be decimated.”

“It’s _Sherlock_.”

“If you have any options, kindly inform me,” Mycroft returned, and Q had never seen him so tangibly _livid_. “If we were able to bring down Hogwarts or indeed any Death Eater stronghold, I would have extracted you in a heartbeat, but we have a greater good to consider.”

Mycroft seemed surprised by his own assertion, that phrase; he glanced around, gaze painfully heavy on those around. “You all understand my meaning,” he said, more calmly. “We have a great number of dependents, those who need our help and our protection. If we were to fail, their lives would be forfeit, and at present I do not believe we have even the slightest hope of success.”

All were quiet. “Maybe one or two of us…”

“Yet more Order members at high risk? This is _not possible_ ,” Mycroft repeated, with something like a plea. “I would sacrifice myself for him, but I cannot.”

The sentence sounded somehow bitten-off, and Q felt a shiver of something unpleasant run through him.

“We can consider other options,” Bond said, a voice of calm while John remained in stasis and Q tried to consider the enormity of what was happening. “For now, I would think we have to work as we have been? Harry, what are you currently considering?”

Harry was a little pale, tired. “We’re making plans,” he said evasively, not quite making eye contact. “We’re going soon, it’s taking a bit of time.”

Hermione nodded as confirmation, Ron looking to his assembled family members with an open apology.

Bill and Fleur still hadn’t been seen anywhere.

Bond nodded tiredly, and the tension seemed to deflate, replaced with a type of suspended grief.

Mycroft moved everybody away, and sat in front of the screens, scrolling through for any glimpse whatsoever of his brother. John left after a while, and the rolling scents of potions could be smelt around the house, John occupying his mind as best he could.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” Q asked the trio, as they sat about, speaking in low voices and evidently planning whatever it was they were intending to do.

Ron looked up. “You’ve got enough to worry about,” he pointed out, while Hermione watched a little nervously, and Harry remained studiously implacable. The boy had barely spoken since arriving, quite clearly plagued.

Q thus returned to his job fortifying houses, moving between and ignoring the pain spiking out of pure anger, building safety where he could and wishing he had done more, had somehow insisted that Sherlock would be safe and _made_ him safe, there had to have been something he could have done that would have stopped this, and the anger turned inwards and Q Apparated into Mycroft’s old London flat and screamed at the ceiling, charms keeping the noise captured and bouncing off the walls back at him.

The screaming didn’t stop for a while, nor did the tears that followed. His body exhausted itself and the pain was numbed because it simply didn’t matter, none of it mattered. 

He needed to go home.

Q fell through the door, to be almost instantly captured by Bond’s arms. “You _idiot_ , Q,” he said sharply, every part of his voice broken glass. “I was terrified you’d gone after him, you didn’t answer the phone…”

“I’m so sorry,” Q breathed out tiredly. “Forgot, just completely forgot. How are things going?”

Bond hesitated, and Q felt the blood drain from him as Bond said quietly “Mycroft left.”

Q stopped breathing, pushing past Bond to dart into the kitchen, through to the living room, and he could see the truth of it written across every one of them. “ _Why_?” he rasped at them, hands shaking, _everything_ shaking.

“Q, you need to breathe…”

“Fuck off,” Q snapped, not seeing or caring who had spoken. “Where the fuck are my brothers?”

John was the one to answer, through nothing more than a small wave in the direction of the screen, and Q felt the dizziness blacken his vision at the sight of Sherlock splayed out on a crossbeam in the middle of the Great Hall.

Q wasn’t sure whether or not to throw up. “I didn’t plant that camera,” he rasped, and it only took him a moment to work out who would have: “Moriarty. He knows enough about Muggle tech, he’s hacked into things before… fuck, _fuck_ , he must have tapped into the wavelength, found the cameras…”

“It may have been Silva,” Bond murmured. “He worked with Muggle technology, in the Department. He has the skills to do it, especially if Moriarty was assisting…”

The world had stopped turning. Everything had stopped. Sherlock was _screaming_ , and Q could hear the sounds play out through the laptop and that definitely didn’t make sense, the cameras didn’t have any audio. “Kiddies, this is what we do to filthy traitors,” Moriarty was crowing, his wand dancing and Sherlock crying out with hoarse pain. “Tainted with Muggles, a _relationship_ with a Muggle. Tut _tut_.”

Q let out a sharp, hysterical cackle. “He was telling the truth, then,” he mumbled. “He went to Moriarty. And Mycroft?”

“He didn’t say anything. He saw the beginnings of this, then just upped and left, didn’t say anything,” Ginny replied, her voice a little high, watching wide-eyed and on the verge of tears. Hermione was crying openly, falling into Ron’s arms and letting him hold her as Sherlock keened in pain and buckled violently.

Harry’s eyes were hard and merciless, and he tapped Ron, guiding them out of the room with a type of lethal determination in his eyes.

“Oh, it just gets better,” Q said with palpable hysteria, and he couldn’t stop _laughing_ as Minerva attempted to fight and was jinxed backwards, the staff trying as best they could to stop it and being pushed back at every turn, students across the DA just as vehement as the Great Hall erupted into rampant chaos.

Sherlock looked like he had passed out. The Carrows, Moriarty, Silva were all beating back the students, and Snape’s voice sailed over everything. “ _Enough_.”

In an instant, everything stopped. “Severus…”

“Quiet, Minerva,” he snapped at her, looking paler than usual, gaze flicking and flicking to Sherlock’s unconscious body. “Take the Blood Traitor away from here. Students, anybody harmed will report to the Hospital Wing. A staff meeting will be held in fifteen minutes, and I would ask Heads of House to accompany their students and ensure they stay there.”

Moriarty looked almost scandalised, black eyes darting, rolling his head back slightly as he sauntered to Sherlock. “Wakey wakey,” he hissed at him, with a quiet _enervate_ following.

Sherlock woke with a frantic gasp, as though pulled from drowning, flinching as he saw Moriarty inches from his face; a moment later, he had pulled in a more refined breath, and spat in the man’s face.

Unsurprisingly, Sherlock was punched for it, but by the look of him he didn’t regret it in the slightest. “Try harder,” he rasped at Moriarty, who grinned manically at the suggestion, the _challenge_ , wrenching Sherlock’s head up.

Abruptly, Moriarty’s wand sailed out of his hand. “He is not to be harmed further,” Snape hissed at him. “I have orders. Poppy?”

Poppy strode with a form of laudable confidence to Sherlock’s side, feeling his pulse, murmuring quiet words the camera couldn’t pick up, Sherlock nodding weakly before making a strangled sound as he tried to stand on his own.

The students were herded out. Slughorn looked frankly unwell, Minerva angrier than Q had ever seen her, everybody poised on a knife edge and watching Poppy heal some of the superficial wounds, pulling a potion out of her apparently endless pockets to pour into Sherlock’s mouth.

Sherlock spluttered, but seemed to gain some form of strength, enough to get him out of the Hall.

The Order sat paralysed, Q rocking back and forth slightly in a way he knew made him look absolutely demented, and he couldn’t care in the slightest. This was the Department of Mysteries all over again, with Sherlock battered and Mycroft gone and this was everything Q had feared from the outset, the loss of everybody he cared about, the Order collapsing.

“We’re going to need to mobilise,” Bond said levelly. “Whatever Mycroft is doing, we have to trust he is making decisions that benefit us. Somebody needs to contact Aberforth, establish if we still have a safe route into the castle, and also establish whether Sherlock used that entrance. Whoever goes will need Disillusioning, in case of Death Eaters in the vicinity.”

Ginny volunteered, once again, which seemed a wise move given that she was excellent with revenge-casting. If Aberforth had granted Sherlock access through his portrait passage, there was a good chance he would be spitting bats for the next fortnight.

Harry volunteered his Invisibility Cloak. “I need it back,” he told Ginny, in a voice that was gentler than most, and she nodded and disappeared.

She Apparated back a handful of seconds later.

“They’ve taken over Hogsmeade, I was lucky nobody saw me,” she gasped, breathing heavily. “Merlin. It’s a nightmare, there were things on fire…”

“So that’s the entrance to Hogwarts buggered,” Ron noted.

Bond raised an eyebrow. “We will need to explore other options. Where are the twins?”

“Manning Potterwatch, I’ll swap out,” Lee offered, and went to do so the moment Bond nodded.

Everything felt somehow unreal. Q had calmed a little. Somebody had given him chocolate. It helped. Not by much, but it helped. 

John seemed to have entirely stopped. Q was fairly certain he hadn’t spoken for several hours, and hadn’t moved much either. His fist was tightly clenched around Sherlock’s ring, and his jaw had entirely locked, watching the almost-empty Hall.

Q looked back, in time to see Silva saunter closer, hand reaching to the camera. “Very good, clever boy,” he murmured, as the bottom dropped out of Q’s stomach, “but not good enough.”

The screen went black, and Q’s legs went from under him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't throw things at me, I'm nice really...? (ish) Jen.


	30. Chapter 30

Harry, Ron and Hermione left a few days later, and everybody tried – and mostly failed – to not feel vaguely resentful at the fact that they’d gone under the circumstances. Q told them to not use the phones, shut down everything that worked on the same lines as the bugs, and did another paranoid check of every single security features he had installed in their safehouses.

It was the only distraction he could find from the perpetual thoughts of his brothers. Both had gone, and one was being hurt while the other was simply gone, Bill and Fleur were still missing, the Death Eater clamps had come down more ferociously than ever on Mudbloods and Half-Bloods, and the Death Eaters stormed St Mungo’s.

They should have seen it coming. In a world where only the ‘purest’ were allowed to live, it simply wasn’t surprising that they eliminated those not strong enough to survive on their own; the headlines read that precious resources needed to be saved for those who would recover fully, rather than wasted on those who had no chance of long-term survival.

“Frank and Alice Longbottom,” Bond said softly. “They killed both of them, everybody on that ward. They even killed the werewolf victims, and I thought they wouldn’t, not with Greyback and the Werewolf Coalition, but… everything, things that couldn’t be healed, they killed all of them.”

Ginny glanced up sharply. “Hang on, Professor Lockhart was in that ward…”

Bond’s expression told ample amounts. Ginny trailed off. Luna, white as a sheet, stared wide-eyed into the middle distance.

The lack of information was the truly awful thing. There was no word. Contact in and out of Hogwarts was impossible, as it was across much of the Wizarding world; Q, in an act of ultimate paranoia, locked down everything that connected up to Hogwarts. They lost video, audio and all contact in and out, just in case Silva found a way to trace back the signal and follow it through somehow.

“If I can conceive of a way to do it, you can guarantee he will,” was all Q deigned to say on the subject, while he cast more spells in all directions, everything darkening and blotting out. “I know it’s irritating, but we don’t have an option.”

Q’s level of paranoia was actually faintly impressive. Very simply, he couldn’t bear the thought of anybody else being compromised.

Potterwatch continued, and that was the only thing left. Hope had to be maintained somehow, and most of the wizarding world listened to the broadcasts. They were a full-time operating radio station, and they had to remain as such for the sake of those who needed comfort.

“… and I regret to confirm that Sherlock Holmes has been taken into Death Eater custody,” John stated, looking blankly at a Daily Prophet frontpage with Sherlock’s picture, the paper celebrating the capture of such a Blood Traitor. “We are all deeply concerned for his safety, as I’m sure you can imagine, and…”

John was even mentioned, as something of an addendum; he was apparently now a high-profile target. It was almost flattering.

John glanced up as Q pelted through the door. “And I’m handing over to Q,” John said with a somewhat bemused expression, Q looking slightly breathless.

“Listeners, breaking news: Harry Potter has broken into Gringotts, and broken out again on the back of a dragon,” he stated. John’s jaw dropped. “I repeat: Harry Potter – accompanied by Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, as we all know – has broken into Gringotts bank. As yet, we have no idea why, but he’s also shattered the roof of Gringotts by breaking through it on an honest-to-Merlin _dragon_.”

Bond was the one to have seen; he had been on a sojourn into Diagon Alley in the hope of retrieving some of the homeless wizards displaced through Death Eater machinations, when Gringotts had seemingly exploded.

In a tense moment, Bond had come very close to jinxing everything in sight, before sanity instigated and he realised there was a dragon.

“… a dragon?” Remus asked, sounding spectacularly unimpressed.

Bond let out a slightly weak laugh, standing in the kitchen and panting. “It gets better: Harry was riding it.”

Everybody was quiet for a suspended moment. “Erm,” Q managed, “are you sure?”

“We’ve all been under a lot of strain…”

It seemed likely that somebody was going to hospitalise Bond in the imminent future, given the bizarre everything that was falling out of his mouth; he, however, was retrieving his phone from his pocket and bringing up a photo.

Smart phones. Bloody smart phones. “That’s…” Q mumbled, “that’s a dragon. That really is a dragon. _Fuck_. What are they _doing_?!”

“No idea, but they’re alive and presumably doing something important,” Bond grinned, looking infectiously happy about the entire situation. “This is progress.”

Q honestly felt his heart thrum quicker, the potential of developments, the potential that something important was happening. “I’ll go broadcast?” he suggested, and took off the moment Bond nodded.

The celebrations were everywhere, and it was infection and such a stupid _relief_. Merlin knew Q needed some good news.

It got substantially better when Bill and Fleur reappeared.

“We were in hiding,” Bill explained, panting slightly; Mrs Weasley let out something like a scream, immediately pulling Bill into a crushing hug. He held back, resting his head on her shoulder, looking immensely tired. “Nightmare, nearly didn’t get out in time, Death Eaters everywhere… got shelter from another Wizarding family, I’m sorry we couldn’t get word…”

“Zey were brutal,” Fleur added, beautiful face contorted with righteous fury, perfect tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “Ze Muggles, zey insisted on ‘urting zem before…”

Her voice cracked, but her expression was still solid, anger keeping her upright and formidably powerful. Mrs Weasley finally detached from Bill, and immediately pulled a transparently shocked Fleur into a second embrace; the younger woman very nearly cracked on the spot, holding onto Molly with something like desperation.

“Tell me everything,” Bill asked from beside them, heavily, and Bond led them into the Skyfall sitting room to explain everything that had transpired in their absence.

Over a week, with no news of Mycroft. Q couldn’t help but keep on hoping, but both Mycroft and Sherlock had disappeared into the ether, and Q tried not to think about it for the simple reason that he would go mad if he tried.

Bond was trying to look after him, and Q was trying to keep himself vaguely sane.

_Not good enough, clever boy_.

The nightmares didn’t leave. If anything, they got worse. Silva’s voice hovered on the edges of memory, which was too much, and Q wanted Mycroft. He really, _really_ wanted Mycroft.

“ _Q_.”

Q was immediately moving. Of course he was. Every time his name was called, he sprinted to find whether his brothers or his friends or his colleagues were hurt or alive or found, whether Bill and Fleur had reappeared, whether Sherlock was dead or Mycroft had managed to do something incredible.

It turned out to be the latter.

“I…” John breathed, indicating the computer, face utterly white. “I don’t know what to say, I mean he’s…”

John trailed off, and Q stopped breathing. Completely and entirely stopped breathing.

The camera into Hogwarts had been hooked up again, allowing a perfectly placed view of the Great Hall. Children were sat in pristine rows, utterly silent.

Q watched his eldest brother stand composedly in front of the High Table; behind him, the staff were assembled with utterly stony looks, Minerva’s lips non-existent while Pomona looked on the verge of tears.

Q was more concerned with the livid black Dark Mark snaking up his inner forearm, the sight of which made Q immediately – to his own surprise – actively retch. It was wrong, in every sense possible, for that to be there. This was _not_ Mycroft. It could not be his brother, 

“ _I am the living example of how one may reform oneself_ ,” Mycroft began, and Q felt his legs crumple slightly, holding onto the table support and watching Mycroft in utter horror. “ _I began as a primary member of the Order of the Phoenix – many of you have known me in the past as a teacher, or indeed will know of me from my past in historical Ministry operations. I will now be re-joining the staff of Hogwarts to educate you in the truth of the Muggle and Wizarding worlds, as one who has been involved in both since a long while ago._ ”

“No,” Lupin whispered, a low moan.

Not Mycroft. Please Merlin, not Mycroft.

“ _My siblings are examples of the most reprehensible of Blood Traitors._.”

Q felt Bond’s arms around him, trying to offer comfort, and Q shook him off with rough anger that couldn’t be restrained, the anger and pain ringing in every fibre of him because _not Mycroft_. “This can’t be happening,” he said aloud, voice strangled.

“ _Sherlock Holmes is known as a Blood Traitor, and is now being rehabilitated by those with his best interests in mind._ ”

“That has to be why,” Bond murmured. “He’s doing this to make sure they don’t kill Sherlock. It has to be.”

“By openly supporting You-Know-Who’s regime, and supporting the doctrine, these _bastards_ ,” John snapped. “They’re teaching this to children, Mycroft is telling _children_ that this is wrong. I’m going to kill him, I swear I’m going to kill him.”

Q was expressionless, while Mycroft continued his speech; at the end of it, Snape and the rest of the staff began to clap. Moriarty looked obscenely excited, while Silva had the obsequious smile he always wore when deeply satisfied.

“How does he have a Dark Mark?” Q asked with terrifying neutrality. “Those only go to actual Death Eaters. If he was just on their side, that wouldn’t have happened, he wouldn’t have a Mark. He’s become a Death Eater, a proper Death Eater.”

Everybody was dangerously silent for a moment. “He can’t be a Death Eater,” Lupin said after a moment. “You-Know-Who must have realised he’s lying.”

Mycroft had turned to face the camera, and his expression was quietly pleading. “ _I would strongly encourage those persons within the Order of the Phoenix, and their sympathisers, to end their current battles. They cannot hope to win. Seek mercy now – as I have – and you will be spared_.”

Q’s voice was monotone. “Unless he isn’t lying.”

“You can’t think that little of him,” Lupin said firmly, and Merlin above but the man had an unbelievable sense of faith. Harry Potter, and now Mycroft. “It’s for Sherlock, it has to be.”

“You fucking know it isn’t. Mycroft’s turned,” Q stated with flat lividness, and simply left.

The moment he was out the door and on his own, he slid down the wall, his brain letting out a loud and consistent humming that drowned out every other sound, drowned out every single thought and left him with just the image of Mycroft’s forearm with the black snaking along it.

Of course, it was possible. Q knew it was possible that he had turned, he had always known it was possible. Mycroft worked with the winning side, was amoral in the extreme, and with everything turning to the Death Eater’s bent it was painfully unsurprising that Mycroft had switched over.

If it was for Sherlock’s sake alone, it was almost worse: Mycroft had left Q in Hogwarts for months, under the control and influence of Death Eaters who had taken great joy in trying to break him down. Then, Mycroft had done nothing but watch.

The moment it was Sherlock, he had disappeared without a moment of hesitation.

Honestly, Q wasn’t sure which option he preferred in that moment, and was left simply wishing with everything in him that it was a nightmare that would vanish, to leave him half-awake in Bond’s arms with the dream only clawing at him like a shadow.

“I think you’re right,” John said quietly; Q glanced up, having only barely registered somebody’s presence. “I think he’s turned. He was getting quieter in the Order as everything kept going downhill… and with Harry gone for as long as he was…”

Q snorted slightly. “I don’t think Mycroft’s ever truly believed in Harry,” he said simply. “We all did, but Mycroft was too busy forming an independent defence while he honestly thought we might win.”

“What about his ‘Greater Good’?” Bond asked, from the doorway. “He has been protecting everybody he can.”

“And now he’s realised we’re fucked, he’s telling us to jump ship before they kill us,” Q completed, voice snapping. “He couldn’t protect Sherlock, he couldn’t protect me. Muggleborns are still dying and will keep on doing so, our lot are all getting slaughtered where we stand, Harry is pissing about with dragons and we have no idea…”

“Stop it,” Bond snapped, tension riddling his body, almost as transparent as the tension throttling Q’s voice. “You know Mycroft wouldn’t.”

Q let out a low, violent cackle. “I know my brother a great deal better than you do, and that’s the problem: I know he would. Mycroft is an extraordinary wizard, and has lived as long and as successfully as he had by playing the games nobody knows are happening and winning every one of them. He’s turned because it’s the better place to be. He won’t die, and I’d imagine Sherlock won’t either. He thinks he’s saving us all.”

Bond didn’t deign to reply, but turned in a swirl of robes and left Q alone with John.

Neither spoke. Neither knew how.

\- 

“… and we lost the Newcastle safe house last night, only five casualties, the rest have bene safely relocated. We’ve also lost the Burrow completely now, they shattered the defences and razed it to the ground…”

A shattered-looking Charlie was going through the overnight updates from around the Wizarding world, while the Order listened with utterly dead expressions and no idea how they were going to proceed.

Nobody had heard anything of Harry Potter since the news of the dragon, and that had been a few days previously; there had been some suggestions of a sighting in Hogsmeade, but the town was practically nothing more than smoke and rubble since the Death Eaters had decimated the place.

Everybody was extremely tired. The Weasley family were grouping together as best they could, without Ron or Percy; Molly Weasley had learnt to stop crying over her missing children, and Arthur had grown a considerable amount older.

The twins remained the presence everybody needed them to be: bright, quick and with the unflinching ability to let people laugh. “Well, we needed a bigger place,” Fred pointed out, with a smile towards his mother.

“Yeah, when all this is done, bagsie the Holmes place,” George supplemented, earning himself a playful cuff around the back of the head from Charlie.

It was enough, for a moment, that they were smiling at least a _little_.

Abruptly, Ginny excused herself; a moment later, she poked her head around the door, and waved at Q to follow her out. “Sorry,” he muttered at Charlie and the Order, who were busy returning attention to Charlie’s quiet announcements.

Ginny had a mobile phone in her fist. “I said those were no longer to be used,” he told her, voice flint-hard; he extended a palm to take it, and was met with Ginny’s patented ‘ _will not cooperate_ ’ face. “Ginny. Now.”

“It’s Luna,” she said, almost angrily; behind Q, the Weasley twins turned up, looking to Ginny with identical expressions. “You two as well?”

“Yep,” the pair said, in unison.

Q rolled his eyes skywards with tangible annoyance. “What _precisely_ is going on?” he asked snappily, while the noises continued to thrum from the other room; Ginny replied by holding up her phone, which was really just adding insult to injury. “If somebody doesn’t explain I am going to get _very_ angry, I am not in the mood for this.”

“The DA coins, they’ve heated up,” Ginny explained quickly. “They’re trying to get everybody into Hogwarts, we don’t know why yet, and you’ve…”

“Yes?” Q asked, voice tense and on the edges of snapping.

Ginny exchanged a quick look with the twins. “We know you’ve been trying to do Anti-Apparition spells,” George told him, with a quietly apologetic shrug. “We’ve been trying to do it too.”

Q rolled his eyes. “Of course, of _course_ it was you two. I knew there was another conflict, I could feel where you two had tried to barge your way in…”

“… and can you?” Ginny asked, cutting over Q’s small but rising tirade. “Can you get through the spells?”

Ginny and the twins watched, him, Q almost wilting under the force of their hope, their want. “I haven’t tried yet,” he said quietly. “I’ve managed to break some, I know it can be done for some, but getting into Hogwarts is going to be harder. I don’t know. As it is, we’ll almost certainly need to go through the Forest…”

“Can it be done?”

Q glanced towards the central room of Skyfall Manor, and let out a slow breath; he couldn’t vouch for it yet, and had no interest in putting anybody in danger for something that may not even work. “Let me try,” he said, with a slow sigh. “Ginny, back into the meeting please. Fred, George, with me.”

“Why…”

“Because they’ve already been working on this,” Q interjected, over the top of Ginny’s attempt at righteous fury. “I don’t want all of us disappearing, it’s too obvious. Go now.”

With a still slightly thunderous expression, Ginny vanished back into the main room to re-join the meeting. Q led the twins out of the Manor, feeling shivers crawl along his spine, trying very hard to think about how this was going to work.

Q ran his wand across himself, eyes closed, breathing out slowly and carefully; under his breath, he murmured the words he had been tailoring and creating, the weavings of motion that would let him through the terrifying shielding of Hogwarts.

A moment later, and he carefully laid the same spells over Fred and George in turn. “Wait for me,” Q said quietly. “I will be aiming for the Thestral enclosure. If it works, I may not be able to come back. I don’t know if it’ll work in reverse, from somewhere that’s already cloaked.”

“What?” Fred asked, with tangible alarm. “You’re going, and…”

“There is a collection of parchment on my desk, it has the detailed breakdown of the spellwork. I can get to the Room without too many problems, the portraits will get me there, and I’ll get in touch once I know what’s going on,” Q told them, trying very hard to steel himself, prepare for entering Hogwarts again. “May I take one of your coins?”

George surrendered his without any hesitation. “I’ll let you know if you can follow. If you do not hear from me, _do not_ follow, something will have gone wrong. I have your words?”

“Yes,” the both agreed, in perfect unison.

Q took a breath, and turned on the spot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so things get... interesting...  
> Hope you enjoy, as ever. Jen.


	31. Chapter 31

“ _Fuck_ ,” Q whispered aloud.

There was no doubting that he was in a forest. Whether or not it was the Forbidden Forest remained to be seen, but the trees were higher than he knew they could be, and the darkness was impressively claustrophobic.

The entire Thestral enclosure was deserted, and Q breathed a sigh of relief as he recognised it: he’d made it. Somehow, he had honestly made it to Hogwarts.

Q glanced around, tension riddling his body, trying to listen for whatever was happening around him; by the time he’d heard, of course, it was a long way too late.

In an instant, Q found himself bound by infinite ropes, slammed against a tree trunk.

Panic tracked up his throat, choking him, as the shadows shifted.

Centaurs. Q had never met or spoken to any centaurs since Firenze; he knew full well that Firenze was in no sense like most of his kind, and a herd of centaurs were very likely to be lethal under the circumstances.

“Please,” he managed, throat half-closed; being bound had far too many memories attached, breath coming in harsh bursts as the centaurs stalked inwards with bows extended. “I’m not here to do harm, or to interfere with your lives, I’m not an enemy.”

“All are enemies of the centaurs, the way our world is forming,” a deep, gravelled female voice told him. “We have sworn enmity with Wizard kind. Goodbye, wizard.”

She drew her bow, and Q realised – with shocking clarity – that he was about to die. He was honestly, truly about to die, and after everything he had done and been through, his death was going to be at the hands of a herd of angry and frightened centaurs.

Q heard the whip of the bow, even the arrow flying, the thump as it hit.

Only, Q was definitely not dead. Definitely and entirely not dead, and his eyes snapped open to see a bemused and livid-looking centaur herd with bows still extended. The ropes were sliding from Q’s wrist, and he simply didn’t understand.

“Q, _move_ ,” a voice snapped at him; Q moved without conscious intention, hitting the grassy floor and rather hoping whoever had spoken had a plan, because Merlin knew Q didn’t.

The centaurs were rearing and yelling, spells were apparently flying around; Q’s glasses had fallen off, of course, so he wiggled around to free his wand. “Accio glasses,” he said quickly, arm jabbing straight into his eye, vision retrieved just as the centaurs started to flee.

“Q?”

Of course, of _course_ it was Ginny. “I _told you_ you weren’t supposed to be coming, it’s ridiculously dangerous, and…”

“You needed backup,” she said simply, a little superciliously. “Give me some credit, I just scared off a herd of centaurs solo, and saved your life.”

Q couldn’t really argue with that, and so didn’t try. “I don’t want to know how, do I?”

“Just jinxed randomly, I think the shock was enough to do it, they had no idea where it was coming from,” she shrugged, helping Q up and glancing around in evident suspicion. “Found the paperwork on your desk, went before the twins caught up with me.”

“You cast the spells by yourself?” Q confirmed, raising an eyebrow; Ginny twisted and glared with the full ferocity she possessed, which was utterly formidable. “Alright, then. Well done.”

Ginny nodded curtly, and the pair headed out towards the castle before anything else decided to attack. The cold threat of Dementors lingered heavily in the air, but Q was fairly comfortable he could fend them off if there were any problems.

They broke into the clearer air of Hogwarts, behind Hagrid’s hut. “We need to get to the boathouse,” Q murmured, voice barely audible. “There’s a passage that’ll pop us up by Natasha’s portrait on the fourth floor, it’s a hike but it’ll do… we’ll then need to cross over to Jack, that’ll be the dangerous bit, but his is a moveable passage so we should get to the Room fairly quickly.”

Ginny didn’t question, just followed; they both all but sprinted over the grass, the clouded sky claustrophobic over their heads, Q’s heartbeat harsh in his throat.

The boathouse was dark and deserted, as expected. Q darted towards the back, to the familiar coil of rope that sat over an almost-invisible seam in the floorboards; it had been a shelter when he was younger, an escape from the mad moments and into the peace of the water and rocking wood.

Now, he tumbled in as fast as he could, and sealed the planks above them as quickly as possible. “We are going to find out what’s going on, and then get in touch with the Order,” Q told Ginny firmly. “We are not going to get involved in fighting or resistance or _anything_. We are invisible. I have a phone, I can call. Do I have your word that you won’t do anything stupid?”

Ginny gave a mock salute. Q nodded, a touch warily, and started them on the trudge up to the fourth floor.

Natasha let out a startled yelp as she felt her portrait move; Q had to hush her hurriedly, assuring her that he wasn’t there to cause damage, and did she know where Tabitha was; she whispered that Tabitha was hiding in Matilda’s portrait in the Entrance Hall where nobody could find her.

“I’ll let Jack know you’re on your way,” another portrait murmured. “And when the coast’s clear.”

“Thank you,” Q whispered. If there was one thing he missed about Hogwarts, in spite of the nightmarish place it half-was, it was the portraits and ghosts. Especially the portraits. He had always felt cared for in Hogwarts because of them, the ever-present faces that he had fixed tears and paintwork and spoken to about their lives, counselled and helped and smiled with – such underestimated forces, too, as Natasha hissed that they needed to go _then_.

Jack was ready and waiting, instantly admitting Q and Ginny, and wishing them luck. Q muttered a thanks, and gave himself a moment to breathe as the adrenaline spiked and diminished with dizzying speed and frequency.

A few floors up, and they popped up with Sir Cadogan being very enthusiastic a few portraits along; Q was sorely tempted to Silence the man, but instead settled for focusing on the door.

He and Ginny belted towards it. It didn’t open.

“Fuck,” Q managed, and felt his heart stop beating, _felt it_. “No. No, we have to get in, it _has to be_ …”

Ginny was speechless, and glanced down the corridor, face paling. “I can hear…”

The pair fell, quite literally, into the Room. The door closed behind them, and they found themselves with several wands in their faces. “It’s me, me and Ginny,” Q said quickly. “Q Bond, brother to Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, we’re not a danger.”

“ _Professor_.”

Q was delighted, honestly delighted, at the number of voices that sounded happy to see him. “Hello,” he replied, picking himself up, in time to watch Ginny near-enough knock Harry over with a hug.

“How are you in the castle?” Q managed, almost entirely speechless.

Hermione answered, and Merlin above but Q had missed the girl. “We were sent instructions, a passageway, a rabbit hole by the entrance gates,” she explained. “It was anonymous, we weren’t sure we should, but we didn’t have many options and they sent it with the invisible ink the Order usually use…”

Q held up a hand, the information dizzying. “What are you three _doing_ in the castle?” he asked sharply, a question more than echoed by the other students hiding. “What are you _all_ doing, come to think of it, and have you heard anything about my brothers?”

The students exchanged glances. “Sherlock’s… he’s not good,” Parvati ventured, with a heavy apology in her tone.

“Mycroft’s with the Death Eaters,” a flintier voice stated; Q glanced over Hermione with something like his own apology, and tried not to think too hard about it. She had thought the world of Mycroft, as had so many of them, and to know that he had switched sides for _whatever_ reason was heartbreaking for all of them.

It was not something Q could afford to think about too closely. “How are you all?” he asked, glancing around; they looked in various states of battered, but were indisputably alive and healthy. “Have you all been living here?!”

“Yep,” a younger year nodded, a younger year who – Q noted – was a Slytherin. Q somehow suspected there weren’t many around. The school’s attitude to Slytherin was pervasively negative. “The House Elves bring food, it’s good, we have bathrooms and things…”

“And the Carrows? Moriarty?”

“Can’t get in,” Michael Corner completed, smiling; Q grinned back at her, quietly thinking that it was fantastic to see the students, to know they were _safe_. “It’s okay, in here. It got worse after you left, Professor Silva…”

Q held up a hand. “I know,” he interrupted. “We – the Order – had surveillance in the school for a while. _Shit_ , I need to call them, James will be going spare… Harry, what’s going on? Do I need to get them into the school?”

“Not now,” he said, shaking his head quickly. “We need to find something. Something small.”

“Can we help?” Ginny asked, standing tall, flicking her hair out of her eyes. “We can get around the castle, Q…”

“You can’t help,” Harry interjected, making Q’s eyes narrow sharply. “It’s something… Dumbledore left me this task, I have to do it myself, I can’t put you all in danger…”

“We’re in enough danger as it is,” Seamus Finnigan snapped, clearly tense, the type of boy who wouldn’t have been suiting captivity; Neville evidently shared his sentiment, identical expression on the two boys’ faces. “We want to help, we’ve been _waiting_ to help…”

Ron tugged Harry around, spoke in a low voice, Hermione’s voice layering in while Harry tried very hard to object and visibly softened as they continued. Eventually he nodded, and turned back.

"There's something we need to find," Harry said. "Something… something that'll help us overthrow You-Know-Who. It's here at Hogwarts, but we don't know where. It might have belonged to Ravenclaw. Has anyone heard of an object like that? Has anyone come across something with her eagle on it, for instance?"

Nobody had any answers for a moment; Q narrowed his eyes, trying to think of something, coming up short. He was a Ravenclaw, he damn well should have been able to think of something.

“How old?”

The trio turned to him, as did all other eyes in the room. “What?” Harry asked in confusion.

“How old are you thinking? A recent thing, or…?”

Harry’s eyebrows contracted. “Well, belonging to her I suppose, so…”

“The lost diadem of Ravenclaw is the only item I know of that matches the description; her diadem supposedly granted the wearer wisdom. Documented as lost years ago, but I cannot imagine another small item belonging to Ravenclaw of any significance…”

“What does it look like?”

Q raised an eyebrow, with a small smirk. “Like a diadem,” he replied obnoxiously, before clarifying: “A tiara-like thing. Ravenclaw’s wearing it in her statue in the Ravenclaw Common Room, I can take you up if you still have your cloak?”

Harry glanced at Ron and Hermione. “He’s on the move,” he said quietly to them, just within Q’s earshot. “I’m going to have a look, so we know where to start… stay here, keep the other one safe?”

Hermione nodded, Ron’s expression staying solid and concerned; Harry smiled at them both, and twisted back to Q with a single nod. “Excellent,” Q said brightly, turning back towards the portrait hole and ignoring the temptation to ask _why_ they wanted a long-lost diadem.

“Not that way,” Neville piped up, and gestured to the corner of the room where a cabinet waited.

Q glanced at it. Blinked. Harry did near enough the same. “It opens onto a random floor, we never know where, but it means the Dark teachers can’t find it,” Neville explained; Q nodded his understanding, and headed towards it. “If we can do anything, Harry…”

“… I’ll let you know,” he cut in, clearly trying to avoid too many people getting involved if he could avoid it. “Thanks, all of you.”

“We’ve missed you,” Lavender told him quietly, half-looking at Ron to Q’s quiet amusement.

Q let out a quiet breath. “Let’s go,” he told Harry quietly, and adjusted the cloak over the pair of them before slipping down the stairs – a little awkwardly, while trying to remain invisible – and popped out on the fifth floor.

“Q?”

Harry was gesturing at the delightful map Q recognised from his years in Hogwarts; on it, he could easily establish that Filch was worryingly close to the pair of them. They thus stayed very still, and Q nodded forward – there were no decent portrait shortcuts he could think of in the vicinity – leading Harry onwards.

The familiar steps of Ravenclaw Tower welcomed him quietly, and Q listened carefully to the riddle: “Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?”

Q let out a breath, and tried to think. “Isn’t there a password?” Harry hissed to him; Q waved a hand at him to hush, as an answer dawned.

“I would theorise that fire creates as much as destroys,” he said slowly; the door hummed curiously, considering.

“Curious,” it acceded, and swung open to allow them in.

“What was _that_?”

Q had entirely forgotten that Gryffindor Tower had utterly different rules. “You have to answer a question, it assesses your reasoning,” Q explained quickly. “If you can’t work it out or give something satisfactory, you have to wait around until somebody can answer it and let you in.”

Harry was only partially listening, more concerned with the statue in the corner; he ducked out from under the cloak, clambering onto the plinth to read: _Wit Beyond Measure is Man’s Greatest Treasure_.

“Which makes you pretty skint, witless,” a voice cackled.

Q spun around, in time to see Alecto Carrow press a finger to the Dark Mark blazing on her forearm. Naturally, Q wasted no time whatsoever in Stunning her; she collapsed on the floor in a heap, in a manner Q found altogether very satisfying.

She had hit the floor with a colossal thump, and Q could hear skittering feet from overhead within seconds; he chucked the Cloak at Harry, and twisted to see the approaching Ravenclaws. “All of you, back to bed _now_ ,” he hissed at them.

“ _Professor Bond!_ ”

Something lit in Q’s chest, which he quelled fairly quickly for the sake of the children’s safety. “Bed. Now. Before you all get in trouble.”

The eldest ones nodded, Q shooting encouraging smiles at them all as – abruptly – there was a noise at the door.

Q didn’t have time to respond before Harry had chucked the Cloak back over him. The Ravenclaws didn’t need any encouragement, but scattered instantly in tangible terror. “ _ALECTO_ ,” Amycus was yelling, hammering against the door. “If he comes, and we haven't got Potter… d'you want to go the same way as the Malfoys? ANSWER ME!"

Of course, Amycus didn’t stand a chance of opening the door alone.

Instead, Q heard a familiar voice: “Amycus, what are you hoping to achieve?” the voice asked with weary sarcasm. “A magically enchanted door is rather unlikely to be opened through repeated Stunning.”

Mycroft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love and Christmas/New Year joy to you all! Your thoughts, comments, reviews, everything are appreciated with childlike joy. Lex will confirm this. Jen.
> 
> (PS: Lex proposed. We're engaged!!!!! Couldn't resist telling you guys...)


	32. Chapter 32

Q briefly forgot how to breathe, as there was a polite but authoritative knock on the door.

“ _Where do Vanished objects go?_

“Into constituent atoms; in essence, into non-being.”

“ _Very good indeed_.”

The door clicked open. Frankly, Q didn’t have the time or energy to see the two men’s responses; he instantly Stunned Amycus, and tried to Stun Mycroft too before his nerve snapped.

Mycroft deflected it with barely an instant to spare, whipping around to spot his youngest brother, having seemingly appear from nowhere. His eyes widened, face paling. “Q…”

Q hit him with a Stunner before Mycroft had time to respond. The man crumpled, hit the opposite wall, and Q’s instincts screamed out against it. Mycroft had near-enough raised him, and every fibre of Q’s being revolted against the idea of Mycroft being with the Death Eaters. Sherlock or not.

“Q?”

Harry’s voice was quiet and a little tentative as he stepped out from under the Cloak. “Mycroft never claimed to be a good man,” Q said carefully, tying the Death Eaters to one another, gently arranging Mycroft into a rough recovery position, his heart breaking. “I don’t doubt that he… he loves, but doesn’t know how. Sherlock and I… we…”

Q stepped back, trailing off. Mycroft would give worlds to keep his siblings safe. If that meant abandoning ideals and the Order, watching their world implode, he would do it. At the end of it, the Holmes brothers would stand tall and survive as only Holmeses could.

The Dark Mark snaked, obscene and a more intense black than Q knew could exist. The sign that Mycroft was not playing, not lying; for all his skills, Mycroft couldn’t be a good enough Occlumens, not when faced with the greatest Legimens the world had known.

It was tiring, and it _hurt_ , to think of Mycroft. The other unconscious Death Eaters were not Q’s brother, and so Q pocketed their wands.

Q left Mycroft with his wand. Harry noticed. Did not ask.

“He’s coming,” Harry told Q, with a note of pure urgency; Q swung back, the truth of it written in Harry’s eyes, in the crunch of pain through his scar.

Q didn’t think, there simply wasn’t time; he grasped for his phone instead, tugging it out and dialling Bond. “James, he’s coming to Hogwarts. You-Know-Who. You have to get in here, I’m going to find Minerva and the staff, we have to fortify the school – I think he’s going to attack, all-out attack. Harry’s here, he’s looking for the Ravenclaw’s lost diadem, and…”

“Slow down,” Bond said simply, and Q looked at Mycroft’s unconscious form and felt the power itching beneath his fingers; they were going to be drawn into a fight, it made sense to eliminate everybody possible now, before everything became immensely complex. “We’re coming. Find Minerva, start constructing defences.”

“Okay. Mycroft and the Carrows are out of commission, but I’m a little concerned about running into Moriarty or Silva,” Q told him honestly, a small spike hitting his spine as he said Silva’s name. “We have an Invisibility Cloak, but when this all goes up…”

“Stay hidden. We will deal with it. Can we access the staff room directly?”

Q considered for a moment. “I see no reason why not, I’m just a bit concerned about you getting jinxed to hell and back the moment you try. Room of Requirement? The corridor outside has a portrait, you should be able to get straight in, half the student body are camping out…”

From upstairs, the Ravenclaws were creeping, trying to listen. “We have to get the students out,” Q realised, with a small sound of horror. “We can’t Apparate them all out individually, we…”

“Q. Stop. We will talk in a moment. Find Minerva.”

With that, Bond just hung up, and Q tried to remember how to think properly. “Harry, I’m going to the Room to find everybody,” he said simply, and extended a hand to give him the Invisibility Cloak. “You need to search for the diadem, yes?”

Harry nodded. “I don’t know how long it’ll be…”

Q shook his head in quiet disbelief. “Okay, we’ll have to hold him off long enough,” he said, and glanced at the peering Ravenclaws. “All of you, back to bed,” he called sharply; there was a scurrying, and they promptly disappeared again. Q glanced to Harry. “Go.”

“What about you?”

“The portraits will help,” Q assured Harry, and headed to the door; behind him, Harry whipped the Cloak around himself, remaining a slightly eerie presence behind him as Q sent off a collection of oversized swans down the Ravenclaw stairs.

With Harry gone, Q headed to the Room of Requirement as quickly as he was able; every half-heard footstep kept his heart hammering too-quickly in his chest.

A soft laugh.

Q whipped around, already casting; Silva Disarmed him without hesitation, Q’s own wand flying out of his grip, but definitely hadn’t foreseen Q grabbing Amycus’s wand from his pocket and parrying straight back, coloured lights shooting from the end of the wand without hesitation, thrown back, ricocheting wildly, portraits screaming in outright panic.

Silva’s expression was black, livid, unable to form any kind of offensive. Q’s spells bounced off him again and again, raining ferociously, and Q had no sense or thought _left_ other than a raw desire to utterly destroy the man.

“ _Q_.”

The cry was enough to distract him. In that moment, Silva was running down the corridor and twisting down another, lost to Q’s sight, and Q let out a scream of naked fury harsh enough to take his breath away, knuckles white on Amycus's wand, voice venomous and screaming. “ _Why didn’t you let me?!_ ”

Tonks’s expression was soft and curiously kind. “Everybody’s here, we need to get the students out before Snape and the other staff form a defence,” she told him simply, ignoring the way Q was still breathing extremely heavily, head spinning sickeningly. He had been _so close_.

Bond was there without Q noticing how, where he had come from; his immediate instinct was just to attack, to let out the buzzing rush of anger on somebody he knew would survive it, because Bond survived _everything_.

“Curse me if you want,” Bond told him simply, and everything in Q deflated instantly, leaving him with his head spinning and wand pointlessly at his side. “Good. Tonks?”

“Remus went to the Ravenclaws, Kingsley the Hufflepuffs, Charlie’s with the Gryffindors. Seems to be no sign of…”

“Who’s with the Slytherins?” Q interjected; Tonks didn’t reply, which said more than enough. The Slytherins had been assumed hostile. “Okay, I sent a message to Slughorn, so he should be there now, they need to be evacuated with the rest…”

Q didn’t notice being guided back to the Room of Requirement – he took a quick moment to scoop up his own wand again, tucking Amycus’s back into his robe – and ducked in to find the place twice as busy as when he left; the Order – from Remus to Molly Hooper – and the full DA ready to activate. “We need to evacuate this lot, too.”

“We’ve of age, we’re staying,” Neville said, on behalf of himself and a few compatriots, including – Q noted with delight and horror – Luna.

Luna, of course, seemed oblivious to Q’s upset. “Hello Q,” she said lightly instead, breaking off from the other Order members to wrap him in a thin-limbed hug. “Fred came and got me, I couldn’t get in on my own.”

“Nor could I, I needed Tonks to cast the damn spells on me, couldn’t get the hang of them,” Bond supplemented; Q, still hugging Luna, just about managed to suppress his snort. “I saw that.”

An outright grin. “You saw _nothing_ ,” Q parried, and glanced over the assembled DA. He had taught them all individually, lifetimes ago, when the worst threat was Dolores Umbridge and failed OWLs. They had grown into extraordinary people, and the most extraordinary was not even there.

Speaking of extraordinary: “You can’t be left on your own for more than ten minutes at a time, can you?”

Q had about enough time to gape, before John gave him a slightly stiff hug. “What in Merlin’s name are you doing here?” Q asked, voice slightly squeaking. “You don’t do magic. This place is going under siege. Are you _completely psychotic_?”

“Firstly: pot, kettle. Secondly, I’m a doctor,” John told him firmly. “I’m staying. You might need me.”

“Who do I need to shout at for getting you in?”

John refused to answer, but judging by the shade of pink Lee Jordan turned, the answer was fairly clear. “Moron,” he growled. John whacked him around the back of the head for being unpleasant, causing a slightly surprised blink from Q.

“I won’t be left to wait again, I just bloody won’t,” John told him curtly.

Q didn’t have the energy to argue too much; John wouldn’t have wanted to stay behind and wait, not again. It made sense that he’d coerced or threatened somebody into taking him.

“Where’re Ron and Hermione?” Q asked instead; at the other side of the room, Ginny was having a stand-up row with her mother. There was not a single doubt in Q’s mind that Ginny would find some way to be involved in the Battle; Luna would be, after all, and they were all the same age.

Neville shrugged. “They said something about a bathroom,” he managed unhelpfully.

Remus appeared in the doorway; his eyes were wild, breath ragged. “We can’t Apparate out.”

Q’s eyes widened, all gazes landing on him. “Oh, _fuck_ ,” he swore on a breath. “I… shit, I’d… I said from the outset I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to… I’m assuming we can’t get any of the students out?”

“We’ll have to fortify the school and just…”

“We can’t hold him off forever,” Bond pointed out. “We don’t have the resources for that. We can only buy time, no idea how long for…”

“Answers the question of whether we can you back somewhere safe,” Q shot to John, a little unpleasantly; John raised a derisive eyebrow that was a perfect copy of Sherlock, and Q gave up.

Another presence at the doorway, this time Minerva. “We can’t Apparate…”

“We know,” Remus interrupted. “Any sign of Snape or…?”

“He’s gone.”

Minerva was abruptly the focus of all attention, Charlie entering the Room at the same time and nodding a confirmation. “He’s what?” Bond echoed, expression constricting slightly.

“Snape. He ran, long gone now – I’d imagine he’s gone to his master,” Minerva stated contemptuously, immediately sliding onto the next problem. “If we cannot Apparate out, are they able to Apparate in?”

Q answered: “The spellwork is tailored and extremely specific,” he explained, voice laudably calm, pushing his glasses up on his nose with one finger. “Unless they possess copies… I can amend some of the castle’s defences to counter it if needed, but honestly, I don’t know if there’s any point. If they could Apparate in, they’d have done it already. Silva ran off when I engaged him in a duel, I’m assuming he’s somewhere in the castle unless he got to the gates…”

From the doorway, another voice began: “We can’t…”

“We know,” at least three people cut in.

Kingsley, however, refused to be silenced. “The Carrows were dead when I reached the Common Room,” he told them, voice slow and steady, all gazes falling once again upon an abruptly very pale Q.

“I left them alive,” he said, voice dying. His eyes widened. “What about Mycroft?!”

“What about him?” Kingsley asked, with calm curiosity.

Q felt the ground shift beneath his feet, felt honestly nauseous. “I left him there with the Carrows,” he said quietly. “Unconscious. I bound him, as well, he… shit.”

Nobody really had any good answers, and so didn’t try. “So,” Remus tried. “We’re missing Moriarty, Mycroft and Silva.”

“Also: where’s Horace disappeared to?”

“Any ideas how we get the students out, anybody?”

“ _You_ , of all people, couldn’t get out for three months,” Charlie snapped, a little bit acerbically; Arthur shot his son a loaded look, and he seemed to calm, taking a steady breath. “Look, if we can’t get them out, can we at least find somewhere safe?”

“Hogwarts is supposed to be safe in and of itself,” Minerva pointed out, tangibly aggravated. “Maybe they won’t get in here, but if the rest of the castle falls…”

“Sorry to interrupt…”

The adults turned as near-enough one entity, to be faced with Ernie MacMillan. “Yes?” Bond asked, sounding unfairly terrifying; to his credit, Ernie remained upright, and asked the question every single adult present had missed:

“How did Harry get in?”

Somewhat dumbfounded, the Order members exchanged glances, swiftly ascertaining that nobody had the faintest idea. “Ron and Hermione have gone to find a bathroom, haven’t they?” Remus asked tiredly, met with nods from all students. “Alright. Any ideas where Harry could have gone?”

“Seeking the lost diadem of Ravenclaw,” Q muttered darkly, and tried to imagine where the boy would have gone; personally, Q would have stayed around Ravenclaw, spoken to Heads of Houses, definitely spoken to the portraits. “ _Oh_ , I’ll ask somebody, I’m sure they’ll know…”

The students seemed particularly perturbed by Q’s rather random statement, especially as he poked his head out of the door to find none other than the inimitable Sir Cadogan.

“I have a quest for you.”

A good opening pitch; Sir Cadogan was suitably riled up, armour clanging excitably. “At your command, noble sir!”

“Find Harry Potter, tell him we urgently need to know how he got into the castle. If anybody knows, for that matter, get the message back to us asap – got it?” Q explained; with a bow, a flourish, and a clattering as his helmet fell off, Sir Cadogan rode off into another’s portrait with great aplomb. “ _Wait_ \- also tell Tobin – sorry, Tabitha – to come up here?”

Sir Cadogan gave an enthusiastic roar of agreement, and galloped away.

Q ducked back into the Room of Requirement. “Harry’s being tracked down. As soon as we know, we can hopefully start getting students out,” he explained, apparently of a similar mind to the staff in the sheer relief of knowing there was still a chance for them.

Bond, without warning, pulled Q into his arms.

Q felt his body strain away on instinct, before remembering, before burnt caramel seeped into his skin and his form moulded into his husband’s. “You will keep yourself safe,” Bond told him, for Q’s ears alone. “I don’t care what else happens. You have to keep yourself safe. Promise me.”

“Only if you do too,” Q replied quietly, and felt Bond hold him tighter, so tight Q felt his breath come quickly, clinging back as though this was the last time they would touch. Q’s face nosed into Bond’s shoulder, and Bond cupped the back of his head with such awful care.

Around them, Minerva and the other staff members were dissipating to put up every defensive spell they could think of and then some. Q was going to need to help any moment, and he knew that, but he had to have this moment.

They didn’t waste words saying they loved one another. It was patently obvious, from the gentle way Bond’s thumb brushed Q’s temples and the way Q’s fists knotted into the back of Bond’s robes as though they could anchor one another.

They heard Slughorn coming, of course. The man was not adept at moving at speed, certainly not moving with any degree of subtlety.

“Moriarty’s taken the Slytherins hostage.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as ever, for all your support! Your comments and thoughts are forever appreciated. Jen.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million apologies for the delay! Hope you enjoy. Jen.

Q and Bond broke apart from one another, in time to hear John’s deeply sarcastic and somewhat weary: “Well, of course he has.” 

Bond gave Q one last squeeze, a kiss in his hair, and pulled away. “Say that again?” he asked Slughorn sharply.

“The Slytherins,” Slughorn panted. “I went to find them all, we can’t Apparate…”

“ _We know_.”

“… and when I got there, it was locked down, James wants the Slytherins to join the Death Eaters…”

Q didn’t have the faintest idea what they were supposed to do. Absolutely no idea. “So we can’t get in, and even if we could, we can’t get them out again?” he clarified; Slughorn nodded in return, flesh wobbling slightly. “So we have to find a way out? Shit, I just… is he harming the students?”

Slughorn made a helpless gesture. “I realised what was going on, and came to get help.”

“ _Attention,_ ” Bond bellowed, and everything fell very silent. Q and Slughorn exchanged twin glances of confusion.

Bond’s voice was steady and authoritative. “I need everybody to listen, and do what I ask,” he announced, voice ringing out; students and teachers and Order alike were utterly rapt, encouragingly. “Good. All Hogwarts teaching staff go now, fortify the perimeter.”

They all duly left. Q nearly went with them, but was stopped by Bond. “I’ll explain in a moment,” he assured, voice slightly low. “Does anybody know where Sherlock Holmes is being held?”

“The Ministry,” Seamus told them.

Q felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, because of _course_ , Sherlock was entirely out of their reach, and very much in the reach of other Death Eaters. “Alright,” Bond said steadily. “Q. We need a way out of the castle. Portraits, ghosts, anything or anybody who can help.”

Mutely, Q nodded. “John, Poppy, Mol – we need medical help ready and waiting, you’ll need to be ready for casualties, we don’t know how bad this could get.”

Molly Hooper nodded quickly, confident in a way that had been born over the previous few months. “We need to raid the Medical Wing,” she told Poppy. “John, you stay here, we don’t know who’s still in the castle – you’ll get killed on sight if they see you.”

“Go,” Bond encouraged, and the pair vanished. “Arthur, Molly, Fleur – get all of the students in other Houses down to the Great Hall. We don’t know where Mycroft or Silva are, so keep on guard, ensure older students are armed and ready. Everybody in here who’s underage, go with Tonks to the Great Hall – the rest of you, get yourselves ready to fight, you can stay here with us.”

Nobody argued, which was fairly impressive in and of itself. Those named peeled off, leaving a sparser handful, including Remus, Bill, Charlie and Kingsley. All of the DA members, regardless of age, had insistently stayed. Bond didn’t have the patience to tell them to leave.

“We need a way to break into the Slytherin dungeons, and kill Moriarty,” Bond stated, with almost amusing simplicity. 

Q didn’t try to listen to what they were planning; he headed outside instead. 

“Hello!”

Tabitha’s voice rang light and loud, an inexpressible comfort. Q span to her, grinning widely. “Hello you,” he grinned, in spite of himself. “How’re you doing? Have you seen Harry Potter around anywhere?”

“Sorry,” she replied apologetically, looking surprisingly well for somebody who had been living in other people’s portraits for the past few months. “I missed you though, are you…?”

Q didn’t have a chance to answer, as Harry Potter ran headlong into him. Tabitha let out an excitable noise, the echoes spreading along the portraits, whispers and disbelief and naked joy.

Q didn’t waste time or breath: “How did you get into the castle?”

Harry looked confused for a fraction of a second, before realisation and words struck. “By the main gates, there’s a rabbit hole sort of thing – you point your wand downwards, and get sucked through it, takes you to the Muggle town down there…”

“Good,” Q said abruptly, and darted back indoors; Bond looked at him with obvious surprise, Harry following after him. “We have an exit, but I don’t think it’s going to be massively quick, and I can’t escort the students solo…”

“By the main gates, to the left, a rabbit hole. Point your wand downwards, and you appear in the Muggle…”

Remus cast a Patronus before Q could finish the sentence, the bright white leaping into nonexistence, Remus’s voice low and steady “Tonks. Take the students to the front gate, there is a rabbit hole. Point your wand downwards, and it will take you out. Go first, and get Muggles out of the way.”

“Harry, do you still have your map?” Q asked suddenly, a sharp bolt of thought; Harry blinked, looking confused, before fumbling for the pouch around his neck. Bond looked at Q curiously. “We can find who’s still in the castle, they might have another way of getting out…”

The Order members started to talk amongst themselves while Q nabbed the map, laying it out flat along the floor. “Help me look,” he asked Harry quickly, as ink spread cancerously across the parchment. “Tell me if you see Silva or Mycroft, or any other Death Eaters for that matter...”

The pair scanned every inch, trying to find the familiar names; nothing, and Q felt a sharp release of breath. Dots were migrating towards the Great Hall, which boded well, all of the Hogwarts staff collected there protectively. They would begin evacuation soon, Q assumed, once Minerva had made the requisite announcement.

Then, there was Slytherin. All of them, in a mass of black, the small square of the Slytherin common room with a centimetre or so gap between them, and Moriarty. “I don’t think they’re in the castle,” Harry ventured, after a moment.

“Alright,” Q sighed, and pushed the map towards Harry; he shook his head, leaving it with Q, Hogwarts laid out before him as though waiting.

Bond glanced at Harry. “Don’t you have something to find?” he asked aggressively.

Harry scarpered, looking rather frightened. “No need for that, we’re on the same side,” Q berated lightly. “Can I help at all?”

“While you’re here, feel free to find other novel ways to get Slytherins out,” Charlie Weasley said acerbically.

Q suppressed the urge to once again emphasise that maybe it was a bad idea for everybody to get so tense, but he didn’t especially want to get jinxed. The students were being dealt with, the school being defended; the problem was now just trying to get the Slytherins to safety before Moriarty killed the lot.

“The password doesn’t work, Moriarty…”

“You can get in without a password,” Bond told them, with quiet and unpleasant gravity. “There’s a charm on it, the same type that Malfoy Manor, Q – Dark Magic, recognises damaged souls. Slytherin believed only those of his… _type_ would ever…”

Charlie was the first to cut in: “So what exactly is meant by ‘damaged souls’?”

“An act of unspeakable evil,” Bond said quietly. “Murder, torture … it’s all variable, Albus wasn’t very specific, but acts of that level of cruelty, that level of evil…”

“Imperio?”

Bond shrugged. “Not sure, but I’d imagine so,” he said after a moment. “Unforgivable, so I’d assume – there was a theory about acts of malice of any degree, but that wasn’t confirmed. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Q felt his breath catch for a moment. “So… hang on,” he said slowly, “that’s you, me… anybody else?”

“You’re not going,” Bond said instantly, dismissively; the kind of tone that would only ever ensure that Q was going to be difficult. Bond noticed the man’s expression hardening. “No, don’t look at me like that. He’s tortured you before.”

“Yes, but unless anybody else here has cast an Unforgivable, I’m guessing we’re stuck,” Q retorted; at the door, Molly Hooper and Poppy stepped through with handfuls of medical equipment. “Any other Order members?”

Mol glanced over. “What are we discussing?”

“If anybody’s got damaged souls,” Remus returned, with an edge of blackened humour. “None of us use them, we tend to use jinxes, barring Bond.”

John glanced at Bond quickly. “Department of Mysteries?” he asked, unsurprised by the answering nod. “Hang on, does it have to be Unforgivable curses?”

Bond raised his eyes skyward. “I don’t know,” he returned irritably, fingers clenching spasmodically. “I know that I can definitely get into Slytherin because my soul is severely damaged. Murder tears the soul in half. Torture, that type of evil, damages bits, but it’s undetermined and not a _damned_ exact science. So anybody who _thinks_ they might have wrecked any part of their souls, let’s go, shall we?”

Q could honestly say he’d never seen Bond lose his temper in quite such spectacular style. “Erm, James?” he enquired gently. “Again – we’re all on the same side.”

“That includes me, then,” John said conversationally.

Every single eye in the room turned to him at once. “It what?” Bill asked slowly.

John looked spectacularly unperturbed. “I was in the army,” he said simply. “I killed people.”

“You were a doctor,” Q pointed out.

“I had bad days,” John said, with a very small smile, one that died on his lips shortly after appearing. “I was in an active war zone, front line. I killed. My soul’s going to be damaged too, so there’s no reason for me not to come with you. I have my gun…”

Q couldn’t help but wince. The gun was entirely his fault; he had begun playing with modifying Muggle weaponry the previous year, and had exacted the designs over the previous summer. “John, you don’t…”

John whipped to look at Q, eyes sharp and livid. “This is my fight too, and I’m bloody well not going to sit this one out,” he hissed. “Not when it’s _that man_ as well. This is for Sherlock, and you’re not going to stop me.”

Q couldn’t help but agree. John didn’t look like any power on the earth would stop him. “We still have some of our protective cloaks,” Fred piped up. “Might be enough if you get hit with jinxes, won’t do much against Unforgivables…”

“This is insane,” Bond muttered, jaw set in a dangerous line. “John…”

“Don’t even try it,” John returned shortly, letting the twins gear him up in anti-jinx protective clothing. “Not this time. I won’t stay in hiding. I’m going with you, and I am going to kill that man.”

It was suicidal. Stupid and ridiculous. Q recognised the flippancy of somebody long past the point of caring; he had been sidelined for two years, left to pick up the pieces of everybody else’s chaos, and unsurprisingly he was refusing to do it any more. “Q?” John asked quietly.

“I’m with you on this,” Q assured him quietly, ignoring Bond’s almost-snarl. “I’ll do what I can, obviously.”

“Fine,” Bond snapped. “So that leaves me, a torture victim and a Muggle. Perfect.”

Q nearly jinxed him on the spot. The only reason he didn’t was because of a quiet voice that piped up behind them: “I can go.”

Everybody turned around, comedic in synchronicity, to look at Lavender Brown. “Do elaborate?” Bond asked, with forced politeness.

“We had to cast Unforgivable curses,” Lavender explained, looking slightly ashamed. “I didn’t… didn’t want to, but it, _they_ were…”

Remus nodded, letting her know she didn’t have to continue; other DA members also rather tentatively raised hands in agreement, only a few exceptions. Q couldn’t claim to be surprised, after everything he’d seen. Honestly, he was impressed that _any_ students had avoided casting Unforgivables.

Bond looked frankly lost. “You’re all students,” he said, with quiet heaviness. Q suddenly was reminded that Bond had taught for years, knew them, cared for them; after everything at the Ministry, Bond had sought – of all possible careers – to work with children. Now, those children were potentially going to be murdered.

“So are the Slytherins,” Justin Finch-Fletchley pointed out apologetically, sensing Bond’s unhappiness.

There were no alternatives, ultimately. Most of the Room of Requirements decamped, and began making their way towards the Slytherin Common Room. “Realistically, he’ll be inside, shouldn’t see us coming,” Q mused, step by step with Bond. “We’re going in blind.”

“Can we draw him out?” John asked; he looked bizarre, trussed up in Wizarding robes with a Browning in hand.

Charlie and Remus had been deep in quiet conversation; Charlie turned to Bond, speaking with quiet conviction: “The students need to go in first. Moriarty won’t jinx them straight out, he’s not the type; he’ll start talking, he always monologues. There aren’t any good fighters who’ll be able to get in, you’ll…”

“No.”

That was all the answer Bond would deign to give on the subject. Charlie and Remus exchanged glances, and continued trekking down towards the dungeons. “Alright, so,” John asked, “the plan is…?”

“To not get killed,” Bond returned, low and angry, as the ceilings became damper with clinging moisture from the lake above them. “I’m going straight in, the rest of you can do what you like.”

Without hesitation, without breaking stride, Bond walked forward and disappeared through the wall into the Slytherin Common Room. With only a second or two of hesitation, John and a handful of DA members followed. The rest stayed behind to guard the outside.

Q stepped forward, and slammed face-first into an unfairly solid wall.

It was fair to say he was more than a little bit surprised. Hannah Abbott looked equally bemused. “The fuck?” he managed.

_Albus believed you could heal a damaged soul… True remorse. Albus thought acts of love, pure love, might also… help, I suppose, but I do wonder if he said that for my benefit._

“Erm,” Charlie managed. “What just happened?”

“Fucked if I know,” Q mumbled, and ignored the hissed _language!_ from Remus – there were more pressing concerns – and placed a hand against the very much solid brick. “Well then. I was evidently very remorseful… Hannah?”

Hannah looked at shocked as Q was. “It was only once, and I didn’t, I _couldn’t_ do it again,” she whispered. “Maybe that’s why?”

Bill shook his head with quiet disbelief. “Well, then. Now we wait, I suppose.”

A playful voice sung out over them, a lazy Irish lilt: “Nobody likes a waiting game.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your thoughts and comments make my soul sing. Jen.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy! Jen.

Q was casting before he’d turned around fully. Moriarty’s laugh echoed, and there was no sign of him; the other Order members were equally tense, wands primed, errant curses flying off the walls.

There was no sign of him. He appeared to have vanished entirely.

Colin Creevey all but toppled out of the Common Room. Hannah – who had been very rattled by Moriarty’s formless interjection – nearly jinxed him on reflex. “What happened?” Remus asked sharply, while Colin panted slightly.

“Susan, she got hit with a jinx…”

“Where’s Moriarty?” Q interjected impatiently.

Colin looked somehow bemused by the question for a moment, before finding words again: “He’s gone.”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “ _Where_? What happened?”

“We went in, Professor Moriarty was talking to the Slytherins, he’d jinxed _loads_ of them, and he saw us and laughed…”

“… sounds about right…”

“… and then Susan got jinxed and Professor Bond was casting and he just _vanished_ , just vanished…”

Q tugged out the Marauder’s Map, looking over it again, trying to find Moriarty this time; the dots were present and correct, the migration of other Houses in full swing. “Can’t see him,” Q said, holding it out for Remus to have a look at, the other man smiling in a quiet way that was almost unnoticeable.

Nothing. “The password should be changeable now,” Remus realised, brows contracting. “Bond’s in there, tell him to do it – he should know how to…”

Q glanced to Colin, who hadn’t moved. “That was to you,” he told the boy, who looked rather startled before vanishing back into the Slytherin Common Room; the simple fact of him being able to caused a small spasm of hatred for what his students had been made into. “So what do we do about Moriarty?”

“There,” Remus said abruptly. “He’s gone up to the third floor, Merlin alone knows why, there’s nobody up there…”

Q peered in along with everybody else, locating the small mark, _James Moriarty_ running on top of it. “What’s he doing?” Q murmured, half to himself. “Silva and Snape…”

“The school’s being put under a lot of protection, maybe it’s interfered with their exits,” Kingsley suggested, voice level and calm as ever. “I would assume that the Death Eaters have had their own means of transportation, even within Hogwarts…”

“I think so,” Q agreed, thinking through the weeks, months, he’d been at Hogwarts under the regime. “So… there’s definitely no sign of Silva or Mycroft anywhere?”

“The map isn’t perfect,” Remus reminded them.

Q couldn’t help a slight shiver, rolling down his spine, at the thought of any of them lurking within Hogwarts borders. Quite what had happened to Mycroft still evaded Q, but he honestly didn’t want to think about his brother too much.

Colin reappeared. “Password’s ‘Harry’,” he said, and on cue, the wall became intangible.

Nobody wasted a second, striding into the Slytherin Common Room. Q had only been there once, escorting a student back who had broken curfew; it was a strange place, dark and majestic.

It was also currently in a state of unashamed chaos.

“… keep pressure on them until you get hold of the dittany. Neville?”

“Nearly done.”

“Who else have we got?” John was asking, robes abandoned so he could move more freely around the crumpled forms littering the Slytherin Common Room. 

Colin had not been exaggerating. Some were bleeding, others just unconscious. Somebody had Charmed curtains to fall around the area, shielding the injured from view; John was moving around from each to each, barking out orders to people around, his bag – slung over his shoulder – providing a seemingly endless supply of potions to go around. Every DA member was helping in some way or another. “John…”

“Not now,” he snapped.

Bond appeared out of nowhere. “He’s fine, James, calm down,” Bill said, with a dry smirk, as Bond’s eyes raked over his young lover.

“No idea why I couldn’t get through,” Q said, without preamble. “What happened?”

“Moriarty was standing on that table,” Bond nodded towards the edge of the curtains, a table Q couldn’t see, “talking to the Slytherins. John just shot him. Didn’t hesitate. Hit his wand arm, think he realised he would be outnumbered and ran, fired off a few curses on the way.”

Q let out a breath. “He’s still in the building. Bill?”

Bill held up the map demonstratively; he was the least versed in medical areas, was – like Q – staying back to let those more experienced tackle everything. “Keeping an eye, he’s stopped on the fourth, empty classroom.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Q said, in answer to Bond’s expression.

“James.”

Bond immediately turned to Remus, who had ducked back into the makeshift tent; outside, Q caught the sight of ginger hair, knew instinctively that the Weasley twins were dealing with the other Slytherins. “What do we need?”

“They need evacuating asap. Moriarty was trying to make them all fight for the Death Eaters, sounds like he jinxed anybody who wouldn’t and made examples of a couple of others… John found one dead. Doesn’t look like a Killing Curse, I think her body just couldn’t handle whatever jinx he used.”

“He killed one of them? Who?” Q asked, with quiet horror.

“Don’t know her name, first-year,” Remus replied. “We need to get the rest out, I don’t know if any will want to fight…”

Q didn’t have any coherent thoughts, really. He swept to the other side of the makeshift tent, popped out in the middle of the Slytherin Common Room in front of a host of terrified teenagers – a good half of whom were crying or comforting others, all very lost – and started to speak.

“Everybody,” he called out, and silence fell, wary and terrified silence. “All of you, listen to me. Hogwarts is being evacuated.”

“You can’t make us fight,” a voice cried at him, hitching.

“I know,” Q returned, not seeing where the voice had come from; the assurance seemed to cause an instant quiet, calm. “Your safety comes first. Anybody who is of age, you are welcome, but you are under no obligations. You-Know-Who is coming, and he will kill you if he can, you know that. Never forget Cedric Diggory, _never_ forget your own friends here today – I can promise, if nothing else, that you will not be hurt by us.”

“Is she dead?” a voice asked, shrilly, as John ducked out of the tent with an expression of tired anger that Q entirely recognised.

John glanced at the speaker – Pansy Parkinson, looking suitably hysterical – and nodded once, shortly. “Q…”

The girl screamed dramatically, and passed out. “Everybody please, panicking isn’t going to help,” Q called out, as John moved forward; the students parted like the proverbial Red Sea, John kneeling by her side.

“ _Get off me, Muggle_.”

It was a close battle between Fred, George, John and Q himself as to who wanted to punch her the most.

Before anybody could, John reached out, clasping her wrists as she lashed out to try and get him away from her. 

“You,” he said quietly, as she gawped in naked horror, “have the type of ignorance that caused your friend’s death. I am not polluted, I am not dangerous, and with a mass murderer on the doorstep, I would have a think about who your enemy is.”

He let her go. The silence was lethal.

“Don’t be what everybody thinks you are,” Q told them softly, and for a moment, could only see Mycroft: he had _almost_ disproved everything, had _almost_ remained the perfect example of a Slytherin who could do genuine good.

Q sighed, letting the man leave his mind again. There were more important things to think about. “Older students, look after the younger. Follow Professor Lupin and Bond.”

The Slytherins got themselves organised remarkably quickly, it had to be said. Q turned his full attention to John. “Sorry about that.”

John didn’t grace him with a reply. “Susan’s fine, shaky but alright,” he said directly. “Two need looking after, Lavender and Alicia are taking them down to the Great Hall as we speak, the others I’m letting go back with the other Slytherins. Any sign of Moriarty?”

“No, no idea what happened,” Q shrugged. “ _Bill?_ ”

“Right here, no need for shouting,” he replied, still somehow smiling – he had the twins’ smile, the type that refused to leave for anything – and glanced at the map. “Still on the fourth floor… What actually happened?”

John looked utterly smug. “I shot him.”

Bill’s head cocked to one side with quiet curiosity; John pulled out his handgun, something Bill actively recoiled from slightly, a weapon he knew of but had never seen in real life until that moment. “You _shot_ him?” he repeated carefully, as though scared of getting the term wrong.

“Shot,” John nodded. “It was very quick. James threw off a jinx or two, Moriarty bounced them back, one hit Susan. The DA kids were fantastic, immediately started throwing up Shield Charms for the other Slytherins… I fired, got his wand arm – it’s why he ran, I think, he couldn’t cast anything else – but he’ll have healed that by now…”

“… not quite, they’re impervious to magical interference,” Q cut in cheerfully, glancing over the other two, watching the Slytherins filter out. “No way that’s coming out by anything other than Muggle means, which I doubt he’ll bother with or know how to.”

Bill blinked. “That’s… clever. Impressive.”

“Cheers for the tone of surprise,” Q smirked. “Where’s James gone?”

“Off with the Slytherins,” Bill replied. “Kingsley and Remus are going too, Charlie’s gone to do a sweep of the dorms to make sure nobody’s been left behind. They’re taking them straight to the evac point.”

“How’s it looking?” Q asked, with a nod to the map Bill was still brandishing.

Bill glanced at the corner, at the strange patch that was all but steeped in inky black, dozens of dots congregated together, disappearing one by one with Tonks’s name just visible at the top. “They’re doing a fairly good job, I reckon,” he shrugged. “Anyway. I reckon we should probably find Moriarty, if we can…”

“… and/or Silva,” Q completed, with a small sigh. “Fuck’s sake, why is _always_ those ones we…”

“Professor Bond?”

Q was so surprised at being addressed as such that he almost entirely looked past Imelda Gibbon; a sixth-year Slytherin, very short for her age, a decent Transfigurist from Q’s recollection. “Yes, Miss Gibbon?”

“I want to fight,” she said, with surprising strength. “I know I’m underage, but so’re the others, the Army ones – Michael and Ginny are friends of mine, _they’re_ allowed, so I’m going to as well.”

The shock rendered Q quiet for a moment, after which he couldn’t help but grin. “Alright,” he nodded, apparently to her shock. “Excellent. Hang on: _all students staying in Hogwarts come here now, please_.”

Slytherins had been filing out in a predictable stream, orderly and composed, guarding one another quite openly. They all hesitated for a moment at Q’s words; a handful peeled away with hands begging them not to, catching on their robes as they stood forward at Imelda’s side.

Every DA member, Miss Gibbon, and the straggled collection of Slytherins – some of whom had already taken the precaution of transfiguring their House colours, evidently intending to stay behind regardless of their welcome – appeared in front of Q. “Go to the Great Hall,” he told them. “You five,” he continued – gesturing to Ginny, Fred, George, Imelda and Michael – go with John up to the Room. Madam Pomfrey and…”

“They’ve all moved down to the Great Hall,” Bill called, waving the Marauder’s Map for emphasis; Q rolled his eyes skyward, and gave up a little. It was a bloody nightmare trying to give orders to so many people who were busy organising themselves. “So plan B: all of you to the Great Hall, and await further instructions. Q, Moriarty’s vanished.”

Q restrained himself from swearing too vociferously. John didn’t bother. “Any idea where to?” Q asked wearily; the Slytherin Common Room was empty of evacuating students now, only the fighters remaining. “Do any of _you_ know why Moriarty would have gone to the fourth floor?”

“There’s a shortcut to the Quidditch pitch up there,” Fred remembered, holding a hand out to his brother for the map; he and George exchanged quick, easy grins, and fell to perusing every inch of it with the familiarity of two who had spent many formative years tracking down names on the Map. “Hang on, I don’t know this one, he’s…”

John dressed himself back up in the protective cloak he’d been given, casting a small, almost unnoticed glance to the girl’s body, lying under a thin sheet. The first casualty of whatever this battle was about to become.

The voice rang through every stone in the castle, the water of the lake above them, shaking through stones with an awful, terrifying power. 

Q had never heard You-Know-Who’s voice before, but instinctively knew; John’s expression closed off as it always did when afraid, Bill was slightly whiter than normal. Cho Chang let out a small noise of horror.

_"I know that you are preparing to fight. Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood."_

There was silence now, the kind of silence that presses against the eardrums, that seems too huge to be contained by walls.

_"Give me Harry Potter_ ," said Voldemort's voice, " _and they shall not be harmed. Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded."_

_"You have until midnight."_

Q felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, immediately whistling out a breath between his teeth. “Fuck,” he mumbled, mostly inaudible, before snapping back to himself. “Go. All of you. Now. Get to the Hall. John?”

“I’m still staying,” the man told him, sounding more pissed off than anything else. “Shall we?”

“Fred? George?”

“Hang on…”

“Got him,” George said triumphantly, jabbing the Map right over another sea of black marks. “He’s in the Hall… erm…”

“Oh for _fuck’s sake_ ,” Q screamed at nothing in particular, and was sprinting out of the Slytherin Common Room without a heartbeat of hesitation, taking steps two at a time, hearing other footsteps behind him with equal degrees of feverous determination.

Q slammed into the Hall, to find everything remarkably peaceful for a room which supposedly held Jim Moriarty. “Good day, Q, we were wondering when you may arrive,” Minerva burred at him; the Hall was surprisingly full of students, an inspiringly large number refusing to leave. “Are you…”

“We have a problem,” he interrupted sharply, glancing around the Hall and finding nothing whatsoever.

The Weasley twins arrived a moment later; they looked as surprised as he did to find the Hall quite so calm. George blinked, and looked at the map again.

Q wasn’t very surprised when George told him, between pants: “He’s gone again. Fred, am I being thick?”

The pair returned their attention to the Marauder’s Map. “It seems that Moriarty is playing hide and seek around the castle,” Q told Minerva flatly. “No idea why, but we can’t keep track of him, he keeps disappearing.”

“Everybody, keep on guard from the enemy within,” Minerva burred at the assembled, and continued to divide the troops. 

Pomona went off with a collection of students fairly quickly, Neville immediately tagging along; he loved Pomona, loved Herbology with all his heart and soul, in fact. It was actually rather lovely to see the boy finding something he cared so much about, after a number of years floundering.

Neither of the twins could find Moriarty for the life of them. Q told them to write it off. They hung around – mostly DA members left – waiting for the last couple of Order members to return from the evacuation point.

“They’re all out, exit is sealed,” Bond told them, voice low and resolute. “We have about ten minutes, if that.”

“Then go,” Minerva said, brushing past them towards the doors of the Hall, heading out into the corridor towards the Entrance Hall.

Few options remained but to follow. Bond’s hand found Q’s briefly, brushing skin on skin, tender and careful. “Be safe,” Bond reminded him, causing a suggestion of a smile, Q breathing out something like a sigh.

“You too,” he told Bond, as the clock struck midnight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... here goes. Deep breaths. I'm sorry in advance. Jen.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand here we go... Jen.

The curses started to fly instantly. The bell had not finished chiming, even; from nothing, from nowhere, the sky was rent with spells that shattered windows and crumbled walls, rubble scattering in arcs.

Everybody in the Order dispersed to the most necessary points, keeping within the castle itself; the castle was the part to keep safe, the grounds simply didn’t matter enough.

In the distance, Q could see and hear the marching statues, ready to protect Hogwarts until they could no longer remain animate; spellwork readied since the dawn of time, the statues then waiting patiently for the centuries required for them to be ready, to do as they were intended.

Q had little time to muse, given that he was instantly trying to deflect the fucking _hordes_ of Acromantula that had somehow been the first things to reach the castle. Bond hated spiders, Q remembered, and couldn’t help a slightly hysterical giggle.

Beyond the first wave of spiders – and Q thought ‘first’ advisedly, given the black shapes he could see moving in the distance – was the first round of Death Eaters, the ones ready to fight to the death. Remus had gone into the grounds with some fighters to pose an initial distraction; based on the way jinxes were starting to ricochet, it had already begun.

Casting happened in half-speed and double-speed all at once. Spiders larger than Q knew could exist lived and scuttled and died, in one case blew up, as Q followed Minerva and Bond out into the grounds, down the front steps.

“ _James_.”

Bond twisted, in time to catch an errant jinx from a masked Death Eater. Another caught Q a heartbeat later, and Q felt his pulse rocket, everything in him waiting and striving and _fighting_ with everything inside him.

He could hear screaming, distantly, as he started to curse and jinx and parry and try to just _not die_. The only important thing was to keep them away from the Great Hall. The Great Hall was their hub, where John, Molly Hooper and Poppy were waiting with supplies and a handful of DA members to protect them.

In an odd way, it was very comforting, to know there was one single aim. Defending Hogwarts itself seemed almost impossible; defending just the Hall was manageable, and Q forced himself to remember that his brother’s fiancé was in there. His brother’s _very Muggle_ fiancé.

Q couldn’t quite believe that matters had come to this.

Tonks appeared out of nowhere, punctuating her spellwork with short cries, volleying back jets of emerald green without hesitation. “Where’s Remus?” she asked shortly, eyes darting over the grounds.

“There,” Bond grunted, taking a half-second to breathe; there was action _everywhere_ , everything he could see a million miles around him.

Tonks didn’t hesitate, sprinting forward to Remus’s side, even as Q noticed the jets of light bounding between the man and another Death Eater, too far away for Q to recognise.

Abruptly, Q could hear a desperately keening, _painful_ shrieking. “That would be the Mandrakes,” Bond commented impassively, before abruptly spinning, and catching none other than Yaxley in the chest with a Killing Curse.

Q could see it in him, see the shred of something that died with the curse slamming from him. The moment a life died, with Bond behind it, and it broke Q’s heart just a fraction to witness. “James…”

The sentence would remain incomplete; Q was cut off by a deafening roar. “Those are giants,” Bond said disbelievingly, and before Q could say another word, was running. Q could see no giants himself, but then, Bond knew such things better.

Q could only watch his husband disappear into the dark, and trust that he would be safe.

Time became elastic. Q could feel long threads of exhaustion seeping into him as adrenaline fired and impacted and left and fired; Hagrid’s Hut was on fire, there were fighters scattering and being forced back and back into the Entrance Hall.

The only thing Q could do was to keep on casting. Thus far, he had only been battling one Death Eater and mostly just Acromantula; the first wave were dead or retreated now, mercifully enough, but there were new creatures coming to replace them.

Q had no warning before something was on top of him.

All he could do, for a strangled moment, was scream; there were teeth, sharp things near his face, grey matted fur and the stench of blood and death, everything everywhere, and it was through sheer fortune that he slid to one side and felt the teeth stab into his left forearm and rip along it rather than his throat.

For a moment, Q couldn’t even feel pain.

It _burned_ , every inch of it, and Q simply cried out spells and couldn’t quite believe when one caught the not-human straight in the face and sent him flying with spectacular force into the doorframe of the Entrance Hall.

Q was bleeding.

The gash on his arm was maybe two inches long, if that. It hurt a ridiculously large amount for such a small wound.

It was only in retrospect that Q understood: a werewolf. He had been bitten by a werewolf. The werewolf in question was now unconscious, still in human form – it was nowhere near the full moon yet – and had the growths of hair that betrayed it. Not fully werewolf, but enough so that Q imagined that he would have a lot in common with Bill.

Q took a moment to send another Stunner straight to the skull, which would definitely keep him out of the way. The werewolf would need medical attention before too long.

A moment to heal the gash – it continued to bleed, but now very sluggishly – and Q went back to the fighting, in time to see the Slytherin hour glass smash spectacularly, vomiting green emeralds across the floor.

Most of the fighting had been moved into the Entrance Hall, now; it was impossible to keep the Death Eaters out, they were too resolute and too skilled. Q ignored his arm – now throbbing, white-hot – and found himself duelling Goyle Senior.

“Q! Duck!”

Q did as he was told, in time to see a spell soar over his head; Goyle had enough time to look very confused, before collapsing in a heap of uncoordinated limbs. “Well done,” Q told a placid but determined Luna, who smiled very faintly; she glanced at his hands, eyes widening. “Yes, got bitten. I’m fine.”

Luna nodded, her hair whipping into her face as she tried to trip up another Death Eater; the man skidded, fell backwards and was immediately speared by the marble sword of a passing statue.

“Thank you!” Q called to the statue, who smiled, her expression mimicking Luna’s as she wrenched her bloodied sword out of the Death Eater’s prone form.

Hogwarts was being rattled from top to bottom with spells, explosions. Q had not seen Bond in a while. The floor beneath them was becoming slippery; Q couldn’t keep track of the students, of the adults, of the people who were beginning to falter.

Q briefly stopped breathing at the sight of Cho Chang’s body, limbs loosely splayed about herself, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Lee and Seamus were desperately trying to move her out of the way, Lee coughing badly, evidently hurt.

Without hesitation, Q got involved. He levitated Cho’s body, shunting her into a corner where she would hopefully be left undisturbed; from there, he grabbed Lee, noticing the spear of bone literally protruding from his right arm, the irregular rasp of his breath. The boy must have been upright through sheer determination.

“Get him to the Great Hall,” Q told Seamus sharply, casting a quick hex at the figure he could see in the doorway and cursing Merlin and all beings of his ilk for getting him tied up straight into another duel.

Q was not a fighter, he was a teacher. His place was with his students, and he simply didn’t have the freedom to be there; he left Lee to the capable hands of his fellows, and could only continue fighting as best he could.

“Hello!” a voice called brightly; Q didn’t look round, but grinned all the same as the Death Eater he was duelling became distracted, and Q was able to Immobilise and quickly thereafter Stun the man.

Aurora was probably the most welcome voice Q had ever heard in his life. “This is fun, isn’t it?” he called to her, as another werewolf – this one far further gone than his fellows, resembling to Greyback’s perpetually werewolf state – hissed his way into the Entrance Hall.

Q would always appreciate Aurora’s simple and calm manner; she cast a spell forward, shooting the gems straight under the man’s feet. He slammed to the ground, helpless to stop the spell that caught him neatly in the chest.

“Another one bites the dust,” Aurora half-sang, and Q couldn’t help but laugh – albeit still a little hysterically – as the entire battle started to get very loud in his ears.

It was very slow to watch.

In the corner, Q saw Greyback fighting Remus. They moved with the ease of those familiar with their own kind; their motions were somehow lupine, lower snarls ripped from their throats and their spells all jagged lines. Distantly, Q remembered that Greyback had been the one to bite Remus, when he was a child.

A little further off: Luna, Michael Corner and Tonks were doing their level best to dispatch Crabbe, the Death Eater battling to kill and surprisingly focused. Goyle’s unconscious form lay a few feet away.

Four other Death Eaters – Q didn’t recognise any of them – were engaged with Fleur, Arthur, Horace Slughorn (Q couldn’t help but feel rather surprised; he’d assumed Slughorn would simply vanish) and Madam Hooch. The Parvati twins were keeping the side up by multi-tasking with whichever dueller needed the most help, both very receptive and shockingly skilled.

Q pretended not to see Ginny, mostly for the sake of her mother, engaged with another ungodly large spider.

There were bodies. There were more bodies than Q wanted to consider. Bodies that were too small to be adults, bodies that the once-animate statues had curved themselves over to protect, white marble tombstones for the unburied.

Q noticed Molly Hooper darting between any unmanned bodies, trying to establish whether they were alive or not; Q didn’t have the energy to feel surprised that she was there, and just dimly hoped John had been intelligent enough to stay out of the way.

“ _Luna_ ,” Q called; she broke off, throwing up a Shield Charm as an errant bolt of light flew her way. “Where’re the Weasley twins?”

“Room of Requirement,” she called to him; Q didn’t wait to see her response before darting up the stairs, two at a time, heading the familiar passages; around him, portraits were screaming and panicking, running between frames.

Q screamed around the corner, and could immediately see Percy Weasley battling a Death Eater; behind him, Fred Weasley had one of his own, and they were being gradually backed further and further around to the next corridor along. Both were holding their own, but not quite enough; Percy, in particular, was not a fighter. Q remembered him from schooldays; Percy would only ever be an admirable academic.

Q was mostly superfluous, in the end. Both Death Eaters were knocked out fairly soundly, Percy shooting Q a strangely awkward wave as spines erupted over the unconscious Thicknesse’s face. A rather lovely piece of Transfiguration, as it happened. “Hello,” Q grinned at him, glanced over his shoulder to the other redhead in the vicinity. “Fred, do you have the map?”

Fred reached into his pocket for the piece of parchment, taking a step forward, jabbing Percy in the ribs and making a joke Q didn’t quite catch, the tail end of a laugh that was still playing again, again and again, as in quick succession Q heard an awful type of hollow scream from behind him, realised he was looking at Harry Potter, and the ground exploded from around him.

A moment of suspension, while Q tried to work out gravity, tried to understand.

His head slammed into the ground, his arm hurt like nothing he could express, dampness of blood across half of his body now and the icy cold of the outside air that had abruptly found entry. The wall was entirely gone, the corridor now exposed to the elements, and Q realised that the voice he had heard screaming was one he knew far too well.

The first thing Q noticed, oddly, was the Marauder’s Map. It had evidently been dropped, inches from his fingers now; it now sported copious bloodstains in amongst the puddles of ink, which Q erased in an almost dreamlike state while screams rent open the air around him and he tried to sit up with a good degree of awkwardness.

“No! _No_ Perce, no, no…”

“… _Q_.”

Q forced himself to concentrate, seeing the wreckage of the corridor around him. Standing was difficult, blood spinning into his head and making him honestly want to vomit, cold air stabbing his exposed skin.

Percy Weasley was dead, there was no doubting that. Half of his body had been crushed by the castle wall. Fred Weasley looked to be in a very similar state, desperately pale, greenish and getting whiter by the second as Q tried to make sense of the fact that Fred was currently devoid of at least one limb.

“… we have to kill the snake…”

Q looked, eyes wide, at the trio. They stood, Ron’s freckled face twisted and red with anger and unimaginable grief, held back by his friends as he tried to make sense of what had happened to his brothers.

“Make this end,” Q said directly to Harry, his voice a horribly raw plea, and dropped to Fred’s side with almost no idea what he was going to do. Fred was convulsing slightly, looking to Q with almost comical disbelief at what had happened to his legs.

Never had Q been more grateful for Molly Hooper. “Go,” she said urgently to him, pushing him out of the way, immediately focusing on Fred, her wand already in motion. Q stood stupidly for a moment, wand and map in either hand, dangling. Molly looked up at him again. “ _Go_ , they need you.”

There was no time to argue or think. Q hid himself to one side, flattening the map out to try and read any names, anything he could recognise; there were a good number of more important Death Eaters still very much unaccounted for, including at least two Q had a very large vested interest in.

There was so much, too much for Q to fully appreciate. Names flickered across the page, half barely recognisable: Emily Adams, Luna Lovegood, John Watson (mercifully still in the Great Hall), Tiago Rodriguez, Dean Thomas, Lee Jordan, Jim Moriarty…

Moriarty. Moriarty was in the Hall.

Moriarty was in the Hall with names erasing themselves, and with John Watson standing precisely next to him.

Q was flat-out sprinting, so fast that he could almost ignore the dead and dodge the Snargaluff pods Peeves was lobbing from mid-air, skim past the Invisibility Cloak that was revealed a half-second later, watch Greyback slammed into a marble pillar from off a student Q could only slightly see, Sybill Trelawney – bless her heart – shrieking manically while throwing crystal balls off a balcony.

Nothing had the time to impact, there _was_ no time.

The doors to the Hall were ajar, and Q flattened himself against one side, listening. It was impossible to distinguish inside from outside any longer. Instead, Q pulled out the Marauder’s Map: Moriarty was inside, almost precisely in the centre, with every other being present circled around.

Q pushed his way through the door.

“Just in time!” Moriarty crowed, with a gun to the back of John Watson’s neck. “I really did want an audience for this you know, this lot just aren’t up to scratch… now don’t do anything stupid, now, or I’ll see how messily a Muggle dies.”

Q looked around; Poppy was immobile but eyes wide and definitely focusing, some students were dead, others just unable to help themselves with whatever injuries they still possessed and unable to help one another for fear of being killed outright. Lee Jordan lay unconscious. Some students that Q could tell at a distance were underage were just crying quietly to themselves, trying to avoid attention.

“Did you miss me, Mr Holmes?”

“Still Bond,” Q told him, with absolute calm. “John?”

“Fine.”

Moriarty jabbed the gun a little bit harder; Q noticed, to his great amusement, that he was not using his dominant hand. “Wand arm out of action?” he asked, with a touch of a sting; Moriarty’s eyes darkened with barely-suppressed rage. “This set-up, by the way? All for me? You bothered to wait here with John just for little old me?”

Apparently, Q had missed something. Something rather important, if the malice in Moriarty’s expression was anything to go by. “Not for you, _baby brother_ ,” Moriarty murmured, almost sensual. “Now – wand on the floor darling, and kick it over to me.”

Q looked at him for a moment. Looked at the gun. “No,” he said simply, and let himself move on instinct, a jet of light soaring across the room.

Jim pulled the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very excited to know what you guys think, as we head towards the end (!). Jen.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy, you lovely creatures, and I apologise in advance. Jen.

Q caught John looking absolutely horrified for a good solid ten seconds or so, while everybody in the room computed that Moriarty had just been thrown across the room by Q’s jinx and John was not dead.

The gun fell from Jim’s loose grip, and Q accio’d it closer, feeling rather satisfied with himself. “ _Fuck_ ,” John managed, with naked shock. “What just happened?!”

Before answering, Q quickly unbound Poppy. “What can I do?” he asked her quickly; she shook her head, re-coaxing those who had been helping her before into returning. “John, are you alright?”

“Fine. What happened?” he asked again, picking himself up; he held out a hand for his gun, turning around – along with most of the other assembled students – to look at the crumpled form of Jim Moriarty.

Q couldn’t help smiling, feeling rather smug about it all. “I programmed the gun to your DNA print,” he told John, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. “Like it? You’re the only person who can fire it.”

John blinked in quiet disbelief. Q grinned.

“And him?” John asked after a moment, nodding towards Moriarty; it was somewhat disconcerting, to have a man as powerful as Moriarty looking quite so _fragile_. The man was small, looked unfairly breakable as he lay unconscious in the centre of the Hall. “Is he dead?”

Q shook his head, was on the verge of uttering the phrase _Stunner, but he’ll be out of it for a little while_ before John shot the man through the head.

Students screamed, unsurprisingly. Q found himself casting spells on instinct, trying to make it less gruesome with minimal success. “For Sherlock,” John said without the slightest trace of apology, eyes resting heavily on Moriarty’s now-corpse.

Oddly, Q couldn’t bring himself to feel anything about it at all. It was such an anti-climax to the legacy of a man like Moriarty. He died as he lived: unexpected and unpleasant.

The rest of the Battle had faded into a background blur, while trying to deal with the unfolding events in the Great Hall; now, Q was forced to rather rapidly compute that Moriarty was dead, John was not, and the Trio were presumably still running about somewhere doing something untoward with a snake. Voldemort’s snake, Q belated presumed.

It felt weird thinking of Voldemort as anything other than You-Know-Who; yet somehow, with corpses scattered, it seemed somehow insulting to give him the honour of anonymity.

“Are you alright in here?” Q asked, somewhat confused by the fact that John was looking at his arm, was calling over Poppy who gasped slightly and started to move her wand over the gash; Q could feel his thoughts slipping sideways a little, and all he could see in his peripheral vision was Moriarty’s corpse which wasn’t _fair_ , better people than he had died already and it shouldn’t be _him_ that was haunting Q’s open eyes.

Q was distantly aware that his arm really fucking hurt.

“Q? _Q_.”

Q tuned back in. “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, and retrieved his arm, his wand, some sense of perspective. “I’ll be back. Have you heard anything of James or…”

John shook his head, a little sharply; behind Q, the door opened to admit a host more injured or just supporting. Beyond them, Q could hear the familiar shrieks of Acromantula – apparently the next round had decided to join – along with disconcerting bellows from giants and Hagrid alike. Q ran out without another word.

The Entrance Hall was carnage, unmitigated carnage. Q didn’t know how to respond, for a long moment, and managed little more than gaping before – without warning – a spell flew at his head.

For a brief and bizarre moment, Q realised he was about to die. In the way of all clichés, time literally slowed to a crawl as the green soared towards him, a perfect arc; Q didn’t even see where it had come from.

Except, it never impacted. Q was wrenched out of the way from nowhere, and it was only odd because _everybody_ was engaged in very intensive duels, nobody could have possibly seen.

“Q?”

Vesper’s voice was past the point of being surprising. She hauled him out of the way of the immediate duelling, pulling him into an annexe, tapestry pulled over them both; Q had his wand out instantly, against her throat, which was definitely a first for him. “Give me a reason.”

“You’re curious.”

Q didn’t move his wand. Outside, an explosion ripped sound across the Hall. “Talk, now.”

“I loved him.”

“You _died_ ,” Q reminded her, unable to quite believe that he was discussing his love life at a time like this. “Why have you bothered with me? Why not just kill me? In Malfoy Manor, everything you’ve done…”

“I love him too much to hurt him.”

For an odd moment, the world narrowed. “You…” Q managed, and lost the ability to speak for a strange suspended moment. “This is all for _James_? You’re a Death Eater.”

“Yes, I am,” Vesper admitted, without apology. “I believe in the Dark Lord, and I believe he will win. I can’t lose him. You’re a part of that, so please – switch sides. Your brother did it. Join us.”

Q couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “You want me to join the Death Eaters, just so James doesn’t die?” he repeated again, slowly. “You think that any power on this earth will compel him to join your lot?”

“You,” Vesper told him simply. “If you go, he will follow.”

“We’ve worked for this…”

“You’re being slaughtered.”

It was true. Q had already seen too much, too many deaths, far too many deaths and injuries. “That isn’t the point,” he replied, and it sounded weak, even to him. He tried for something a touch more emphatic: “We won’t let him win. Even if this goes wrong, we won’t let him.”

Vesper just looked at him, expression slightly sad. “James is my priority,” she told him frankly. “If you die, that’s your choice. If you plead for mercy, the Dark Lord will give it.”

“I don’t beg,” Q told her frostily. “He is killing good people. James knows that, he won’t switch sides. Not for you, not for me.”

“He’d do anything for you,” Vesper contradicted softly, and she was so beautiful, and in so much pain. It was written in every part of her.

The chaos outside had faded back into a small, murmuring thing; Q’s entire world was Vesper Lynd, for a moment, and she watched him with a past written in her that Q didn’t understand. He didn’t really want to. “Why did you leave?” he asked her, voice as strong as he could make it, wand still at her throat. It hadn’t moved an inch, and nor had she. “Why disappear?”

Her eyes were soft, somehow, and Q could feel every breath of himself waiting and _waiting_ for her response. “He would never have let me go,” she told him, almost inaudible in the noise swamping them. “I…”

There was another terrifying crashing sound, like an entire wall had been destroyed; both Q and Vesper couldn’t help the instinctive turn, flinching for cover, and in that moment Q did something he could honestly say he wasn’t proud of: he jinxed her, wand still at her throat. It was poor conduct, poor duelling conduct, but trying to have in-depth conversations while Hogwarts burned was not feasible.

Q bound her quickly, ensured she would remain unconscious, and left her behind the tapestry until there was a decent enough chance to retrieve her.

It was very evident just what was causing the noise: two giants, fighting one another only a handful of steps outside the Entrance Hall. A lot of the fighting seemed to have migrated out into the courtyard, into the grounds, and Q followed it.

Hair was splayed on the floor, and if it weren’t for the colour, Q would have ignored it altogether; only, nobody else had hair such a vibrant shade of pink, nobody Q had ever known.

Q’s legs nearly went from under him. Tonks had a husband, a baby. Tonks was _young_ , one of the youngest of the Order, and she _could not be dead_ , not like this, not here and now. Not until Teddy Lupin was older and would know a mother to grieve, not mourn for what could have been.

Her expression was mercifully peaceful, eyes wide and glassy. Q couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, and it was more than it should have been because everything was clouding inwards, blackness, on his knees, pain, more tired than he knew he could be and _his_ voice, inescapable, _mine, si? You can take it, clever boy_ , the press of body against his, into his, falling to pieces with screams half-remembered on his lips –

The warmth swept through every inch of Q’s skin, a white rabbit lolloping inches from his fingertips, incorporeal but very much _present_.

Dementors. Absolutely swarming the Hogwarts grounds. In front of him, Q could just catch glimpses of the trio – who were all alive, he noted with mild hysteria – and realised the Patronus was Luna’s.

“A Patronus,” she urged him, while her own darted in loops around him, keeping him safe while the voice receded. “Q, you have to cast a Patronus.”

“Expecto Patronum,” Q tried, trying to make himself calm down, trying to imagine something, anything, that didn’t make the panic claw back up his throat again. It was hard enough without Dementors, it wasn’t fair. “ _Expecto Patronum_.”

A small wispy nothing, and Q wanted to scream; they were coming closer, and Luna was getting frightened now too. _No no, stay still little one. No tears, hmm?_ Her Patronus was dwindling, not protecting her but protecting him while he tried and failed to find a happy memory. Everything was throttled by pain, by expectation.

The rabbit was near enough entirely translucent, and Luna had gone very pale.

Finally, Q recalled his wedding day: abrupt and triumphant, his swan burst out, battling back the Death Eaters that were near enough on top of them. As they fell back, Luna’s rabbit became dense, and the warmth surrounded them.

Silva’s voice faded back, back, and Q could think again.

“Thank you,” he rasped to Luna, his head still spinning; between them, they beat back the swarming Dementors that kept coming closer, Q keeping any and all happy memories close to his chest and trying not to let them be polluted. Thoughts of Mycroft made everything flicker.

Q missed his big brother more than he could express. Mycroft made everything safe.

A crash reverberated through the earth, almost knocking Q off his feet; another giant had stumbled from the forest, club in hand. Q let out a breath. The fighting seemed to have shifted a little after the Dementors attacked, leaving a brief lull for Q to try and catch his breath along with Luna.

“Well done,” she told him, with a small smile. Q quickly pulled her into a slightly startled hug; he owed Luna so much, and it broke his heart that she was in the centre of a battle that she could honestly die fighting in. Luna was seventeen. They were all children, Voldemort and his Death Eaters were indiscriminately murdering children.

On the other side of the castle, the giant was causing problems; the sound of crashing stone, shattering glass of once-windows, cries of spells and the firework jets of light that were tearing the sky open.

“We should go,” Luna said aloud, gaze darting to Q.

Q nodded, and the pair started to dart around the outside of the castle, through the blackened grounds. Literally; there were spells that had cleaved earth, scorched the grass black and ashen. Q’s home was being taken apart in front of his eyes.

The main fighting had shifted to the Herbology greenhouses, of all places. The giant was being felled by increments – most were students, and were doing admirably – and then there were the Death Eaters, which the more experienced fighters were dealing with.

Neville was the most striking image by a long margin. Standing tall, venomous tentacula looped around his wrists and forearms, a Medusa, casting his arms forward with wand in hand and shooting the snapping mouths forward. Eight or so snapping heads flew at a masked Death Eater, who shrieked and collapsed.

Abruptly, every single Death Eater, every giant, every enemy, disappeared.

Several people screamed at the closeness, the intimacy of the voice that issued again from every wall, sounding like it was coming from over the shoulder, sliding into every ear.

“You have fought," said the high, cold voice, "valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery."

"Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately."

Q let out a small breath. A reprieve. If nothing else, they had a reprieve, to regroup and work out what they could do next, how they could survive: it was clear that they were losing. The castle was shattering.

"You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured."

"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."

A gasp, instead; it was unfair, impossibly unfair, that one boy should hold the weight of life and death on his shoulders. His friends, his teachers, people he loved and people he trusted and Voldemort was blaming him wholesale.

Wherever he was, Q hoped Harry knew that it was not his fault. That he couldn’t possibly let himself be killed; it would mean the battle never ending, Voldemort taking control, the emblem of revolution dying.

Those concerns were placed to one side. It was more important to start finding the injured, the dead. Q assumed that they would return to the Great Hall; he immediately went indoors, and – with adrenaline ebbing to the point of nausea, of impossible fatigue – he felt himself sob aloud at seeing Tonks again.

Even in death, she was beautiful. Inspirational. Q felt a strange sobbing giggle rise in his throat as he thought: Whisp would miss her horribly. He couldn’t stop giggling, half-laughing and half crying as he and somebody else – he didn’t see who, couldn’t concentrate – lifted her into the Hall.

Q placed her carefully down, arranged her hair slightly, hands shaking.

There was a heartbreaking, awful cry. An unparalleled sound of pure despair, a mother faced with a dead child – Percy Weasley’s body lay, battered, to one side – and Fred severely injured; it was beyond understanding, somebody who could feel so acutely and so openly in the midst of the battle.

Fred Weasley was alive, but only just; both Poppy and John were trying to work out ways to work around his non-existent legs. They could do very little, but they would not concede defeat for a little while yet.

Instead of watching them, rather than listening to the sounds of a grieving mother, Q cast his attention around the hall. Children and adults alike were trying to help their injured friends; Q was entirely aware of his own weaknesses when it came to healing spells, and so stood back for a moment, just trying to take it in, feeling incredibly sick.

His legs started to go from under him, and he glanced around, finding nothing in the way of chairs; he let himself go limp, folding his limbs into a strange heap, nothing but purple hair behind his eyes, Fred’s legs and Molly Weasley’s sobs bouncing around his brain, the statues that had been carefully closed around the frail bodies of children far too young.

Abruptly, he looked up, trying to find Lee Jordan; scanning the Hall was difficult, and Q wasn’t certain he could stand, instead trying not to hyperventilate as somebody came close, knelt down in front him. “Q?”

Q couldn’t remember how to speak. A hand reached out, gently laid on top of his own, warm and very soft. “Q?”

“I’m fine,” he said as steadily as he could, eyes just not focusing properly, his own voice not sounding real. “Sorry. Fine. Time?”

“What?”

“How long?” Q managed, nothing responding properly, and it was _ridiculous_. He was an adult. He was supposed to be an adult, the students would need looking after, more important than him, and he needed to convince whoever it was that he was alright. “Time?”

“Fifty minutes or so.”

Q nodded disconnectedly, finally focusing his eyes a little. Aurora was watching him with naked concern. “We can’t win,” he whispered. “We’re being slaughtered, we have an army of children… who else? Who’ve we lost?”

A part of Q was aware that he was beginning to cry despite himself, and loathed himself for it, for being weak when there wasn’t time and wasn’t scope, he should be _helping_ , and he couldn’t force the motion to start.

“ _Q_.”

Aurora moved out of the way, replaced by Bond. Q didn’t have the energy to feel relieved, even; he pitched forward, Bond’s arms holding him so tightly he couldn’t breathe and didn’t care, eyes staring out widely, unseeing, Bond’s arms so warm, and Q felt himself cry and felt Bond’s heartbeat against his ear, the thumping of Bond being completely alive even though Q didn’t feel alive himself.

Bond’s face was buried in Q’s hair, kissing the top of his head with gentle insistence, hushing him and soothing him and very slightly, almost imperceptibly shaking.

“I need to help,” Q said abruptly, wrenching himself out of Bond’s arms, covering his face and wiping away the tears in sharp, angry motions. “I can’t do this now, I need… I have to do something, or I’ll go mad.”

There was an intensity in his expression that couldn’t be questioned. Bond looked at him, cupped his face, studied him as though he could vanish. “I love you,” he said, with a force of true conviction.

Q felt himself almost crumpling. “I have to do something,” he said again, with a note of desperation. “Looking for injured, b-bodies, whatever, just… busy. I don’t want to think about it right now.”

Bond nodded. “I need to stay here, I’m going to talk to Order members and try and recollect for the next push,” he said calmly, carefully. “The older students are retrieving bodies as we speak…”

“Oh _fuck_ ,” Q said, with a hammering of realisation. “James, Vesper’s underneath a tapestry. Refused to kill me, I knocked her out and tied her up, not a threat, but we need to find her and I haven’t seen Silva or Mycroft _anywhere_ , and Sherlock…”

“Calm down,” Bond ordered, a solidity Q trusted on instinct, had to trust as something to ground him. “Show me where Vesper is, and then go find any trapped or injured.”

Q nodded, stood, his body and mind revolting against itself; Q had no idea what his responses were doing, but needed to move, needed something.

“Are you alright?”

John looked stoic, jaw set, the eye of the storm. “Eat something,” he told Q. “Are you injured?”

“No,” Q replied, with a jerky headshake. “Do you have…?”

“Top table, the House Elves did what they could,” John replied, glancing over Bond, establishing he was alright. “Any sign of…?”

Bond shook his head, and John nodded. “Talk to you in a bit,” he told them, and moved on to the next injured, the next hurt, and Q couldn’t understand why Bond, why John, weren’t imploding. Experience, he assumed, trying to make logical thought reinstate itself, just about succeeding.

Q moved to the High Table, grabbing something, he didn’t really compute what.

Remus. Remus Lupin, lying next to his wife.

Q closed his eyes for a moment, breathed in, breathed out steadily and counted various numbers in his head, worked through Arithmancy problems disconnectedly, and opened his eyes again with a strange calm washing over him, to the tips of his fingers, a necessary form of calm that gave him the strength to get out of the Hall, to assess in a detached sort of way all the damage. He took the Marauder’s Map with him; the living could be seen, their names floating across the grounds.

He nearly ran into Harry, Ron and Hermione. The latter two peeled off immediately, Ron going to find his family, his injured and dead family members, and Q could see the shift in dynamic between the two from a mile.

It made sense, in a time like this, to grasp the people you love and never, ever let them go.

Q couldn’t find words. He simply looked at Harry for a moment. “It isn’t your fault,” he managed, and walked out, before the storm crashed over his head.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all going to kill me. I'm sorry. Jen.

Most of the bodies in the Entrance Hall and inside the castle had already been retrieved; the bulk of the work was now outside, Oliver Wood, Neville, other students. Most staff were in the Great Hall discussing how best to proceed, the heartbeat of the castle confined to a single room of the dead and mourning and battling.

Q guided Bond towards the tapestry he had hidden Vesper behind. She was still unconscious, precisely as Q had left her. She was the only living Death Eater left in Hogwarts, according to the Marauder’s Map; every other Death Eater had presumably been summoned through their Dark Marks.

“Do you want to stay?” Bond asked Q, his voice slightly flinty.

Vesper’s hair splayed across the floor, and Q could see Bond seeing her and not seeing her all at once. Seeing her body when she died, mourning her, her unconscious body now mimicking.

“I’d like to,” Q admitted, “but I understand if you want me to go.”

Bond shook his head, something like denial, disbelief. “Stay,” he asked, roughly, and knelt to Vesper’s side. “ _Enervate_.”

Vesper’s eyes slid open, and Q felt rather than heard Bond’s breath catch.

“James,” she said, with a smile, a type of relief. “Hello.”

Bond just looked at her for a while. She looked straight back. Q was ignored entirely for time that seemed to stretch infinitely.

Vesper reached out to him, and Bond didn’t move, her hand stroking his cheek. Q didn’t feel jealous, which surprised him somewhat; instead, he couldn’t feel much more than pity for her. After so many years, to be still so lost on one person, all of her being straining for him and only him.

Q wondered whether he would do the same, in her situation. Love without stopping, love with such single-mindedness that lifetimes could pass and he would still love James Bond and only James Bond.

No.

If he lost Bond, one day, he would move on. It would hurt – hurt beyond expression – but he would heal. If he had learnt nothing more in the last three years, it was that hurts do heal if you let them.

“I don’t have time to deal with you,” Bond told her quietly. “You are, however, under arrest with the obvious intention of taking you to Azkaban.”

Vesper nodded. “I assumed as much,” she replied. “James – I’m sorry.”

“Good.”

Q felt like he was intruding. Bond looked like he could shatter in an instant. Vesper just watched Bond with a bright and playful expression, the kind of love that wasn’t sentimental but practical: two equal souls.

Bond had an expression of sublimated grief. Q wished it wasn’t so familiar, but too much time and too much pain had passed, and Bond mourned more than he allowed others to see. “Why?”

“I had to,” she told him simply. “James. You and the Order, you’re losing this battle.”

Q felt the crawling edge of tension up his spine, gaze darting between them both. Bond’s voice was steady and entirely calm. “It does not mean we will stop fighting.”

Vesper’s eyes danced to Q’s. “Mycroft knew you could never win. Both of you – just switch now, before it’s too late. He will kill you.”

Q felt his fists clench spasmodically. Behind them, students and teachers were moving the dead and injured, students were limping their way back to the Great Hall with Flitwick in charge, trying to find anybody left alive. Students of all ages had sneaked in; Q briefly recognised some of his favourite students, carried on levitated stretchers or just lifted between them.

Their deaths meant something. It meant not giving up.

Only, Bond was looking to Q with a somewhat haunted expression, and Q didn’t like what that implied.

“Q?”

“You’re not considering it?” Q asked with palpable horror. “No, James. Absolutely not. I’m fighting for a _reason_ , they locked me in the dark for weeks and tortured me and I’m _fucked_ if I’m giving them me.”

“If you’re on their side, you’re no longer a target,” Vesper interjected, still calm, beseeching. “You are safer with us than against us. Raoul still wants you back, if you’re captured alive…”

“Don’t you dare,” Q snarled, vicious. “Don’t you _dare_ try and scare me into it.”

Vesper looked back to Bond. “You know I’m telling the truth,” she told him. “You love him, I want to help both of you.”

“You want to help him,” Q corrected. “I’m an incidental.”

Bond’s voice was flint. “I’m not going anywhere without him.”

“Point and example,” Vesper said, with a small smile towards Q. “I can ensure both of you are safe. The Dark Lord will have mercy, if you surrender now.”

Q snorted. “What, like he’ll have mercy towards Harry Potter?” he asked rhetorically. “He’ll expect us to fight, and we won’t. We just won’t. We won’t help you find Harry, we will not run away – the castle needs us, needs good fighters…”

“You can ensure Q’s safety?” Bond asked, for clarification.

“If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, I swear I will jinx you into oblivion,” Q hissed.

Vesper nodded, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “James…”

“You love me. If you love me, you’ll take him without me – he matters more. Q stays unharmed, you are responsible for his safety…”

Q raised an eyebrow, and Stunned Vesper without further hesitation. She had not enough time to even look surprised. Bond, however, did. “You bastard,” Q snapped. “You will _not_ martyr yourself for me or do this bollocks where you send me off for my own good, you don’t make those sorts of decisions for me. I get it, you don’t want me to die, but…”

Bond stood, and Q’s words were cut off as he was pulled into a crushing hug. Bond’s voice was fractured in his ear. “I can’t lose you.”

The tension in Q’s body refused to dissipate, and he felt the anger and the panic and the grief under his skin, shaking uncontrollably in his husband’s arms. “You won’t make decisions for me,” Q repeated, fervent. “I’ve had more than enough of people making decisions for me, James, and you won’t, you can’t be one of them. I love you, I love you so much and I don’t want to lose you and _I don’t want to die_ but if I do it’ll at least be on my own terms, I don’t want to be without you, James, I want to go down fighting with you, not without you…”

Bond hushed him, cradling him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, again and again, Vesper’s unconscious form at his feet. “I’m sorry.”

They stayed there for a moment or two. Q could hear people trying to clean up, trying to search for more survivors; he pulled away, letting out a controlled breath. “Okay. I have to go.”

A nod, as controlled as Q’s breathing. “Yes. I need to find Minerva…”

“Get her into the Hall I think, she can just… she’s not injured, but a Death Eater might…”

“I’ll get her out of the way,” Bond interjected. “I don’t know what’ll happen to any surviving Death Eaters, now Azkaban’s gone…”

“Something for later,” Q recommended, and squeezed Bond’s hand quickly before slipping away, moving down through the castle.

The portraits were mostly abandoned. Q imagined they’d gone somewhere together, finding a larger portrait they could shelter in until the battle was done. Many canvases were sliced or dusty or with round scorch marks from errant curses; Q glanced over them, and couldn’t help a very genuine grin at the sight of Tabitha.

“You’re alive,” he stated, grinning.

“So are you,” Tabitha replied delightedly. “We were all so worried when you left. I peeked from the canvas, the fight…”

“Get to safety,” Q advised, not letting him finish. “If you’re in a portrait when it gets ruined…”

Tabitha shook her head; Q was quietly delighted to realise that she had clearly found a bra and something to fill it, worked on makeup – in spite of the Death Eaters and Hogwarts, sheltering somewhere had apparently allowed her safety. “We’re all out of the way, lots of portraits have twins elsewhere – lots of us are in Scotland, there’s a nice little pub there a load of us have gone to.”

Q couldn’t help but be deeply relieved. It was easy to forget the portraits, but they had lives, personalities as much as the living; the Wizarding world had so much. Portraits were classified non-human, and not afforded the same rights as Wizards or Muggles. Portraits, ghosts, dispensable according to Ministry regulations.

It was all moot. There was nothing left of the Ministry. Hogwarts, the Order and their students, they were all that was left. Everybody else was too afraid or had too much to lose.

“We’re alerting everybody we can,” Tabitha promised, as Q struggled with the desire to just hold her. Q had trusted Tabitha throughout, helped, cared for, and would never be able to touch her or know anything more than the dapples of wax or ink. “Beth sends her love.”

“And mine to her,” Q replied, voice as steady as he could make it. “I’ve got to go, but please, go back now and stay out of the way. Promise me?”

Tabitha nodded, and Q noticed a tear stain the wax. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” she told him, and walked away through the frame, disappearing from view.

Q headed into the black grounds, finding weeping students, getting them back indoors and to safety. Bodies mutilated by Acromantula, broken limbed students who hadn’t been able to get back on their own, those jinxed and terrified that Q lifted the spells on for them to break down simply sobbing.

There were a number, actually, just sat crying. Students who had watched their friends die, who had been hurt and were running on pure adrenaline and a desperate desire to stay alive. None sought attention, caused harm; they just cried as they tried to understand, and couldn’t.

Pragmatism helped. They needed safety, and Q got them there. He called on others when required – Poppy came out to deal with the injured and transport them back – and combed every inch of the grounds he could, a quiet and cold determination living in his spine that he _would not_ let anybody be left behind.

Q walked towards the next body, heartbeat slow. There were dead Death Eaters too, of course, and Hogwarts were treating them with the same dignity they showed their own. Death is a tremendous equaliser.

A crumpled body lay near the outskirts of the grounds, the Marauder’s Map reading _Tiago Rodriguez_ , and Q picked his way over the rubble of destroyed castle walls to reach whoever it was.

“I’m coming,” he said aloud, his voice carrying to the boy, presumably a student or ally he hadn’t met yet. He hoped to hell it wasn’t a first-year. “Stay still if you’re injured, I’ll just be a second…”

The man moved, and there was something in it that made every part of Q rebel on instinct.

 _The map never lies_ , Remus had told him once, explained it in full. Never lied, and yet there was no doubting that the man in front of him was Raoul Silva.

Q was disarmed before he knew what had happened.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t respond. There was nothing left.

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly, instead. Nobody would find him out here. Nobody was looking. Q was not in the sightlines of the Hall. Bond and the others were busy or talking or doing _something_ , and it was too late.

“That must be the delightful map I’ve heard tell of,” Silva hummed, moving slowly, sauntering closer with an obnoxious ease. Q closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, feeling absolutely nothing. Sensation had slipped away from him entirely. There was nothing, no fear, no tears, no grief, and Silva’s fingers trailed to his face and Q didn’t move, didn’t respond. The map was taken out of Q’s unresponsive fingers, and Silva looked at it, tsked. “My birth name.”

A loophole that the Marauders clearly hadn’t thought of, Q thought distantly, blinking languidly, wondering if he was dead. It felt like he was dead already.

His voice was dull. “What are you intending to do with me?” he asked, past the point of caring much.

Perhaps it was inevitable. That all Q had done would culminate in this moment. Living or dying, it equated to the same thing.

Fingers under his chin, tilting his head up slightly, Silva’s expression tenderly concerned, worried about him perhaps. “I’m sorry things had to be this way,” he murmured, something for Q’s hearing alone.

Q met his gaze. “This was always about James.”

“Do not misunderstand me,” Silva said, with a smile, a small sad smile. “I am very fond of you, my clever boy. You were always so very clever. My favourite student, and you did intrigue me… so clever, so beautiful. So mysterious.”

There was a painful honesty in Silva’s voice, a loving mournfulness. “It’s nice to know I mattered,” Q said, wry, quiet.

Silva nodded, thumb running across Q’s cheek, gentle and sad. His kiss was chaste, careful; Q let it happen without truly thinking, heartbeat slow, too slow almost, body fading in the moments he had left.

Q closed his eyes again, breathing out. The calm was everything. In a strange way, he was almost happy. There was a peace waiting for him. Months and weeks. Things he had seen and experienced, torture, months in the dark.

At least it had been a beautiful life.

Faces flickered, lights dancing in the memories he could still grasp.

He had been so, so loved.

The world was dark, peaceful. Silva spoke, familiar words, and the world sparked bright green behind his eyelids, Q letting out a slow sigh, lips parted as his body was slammed with something impossibly solid, and he was knocked backwards, smiling very slightly as his vision filled with the ice blue of James’s eyes, and there was blissful, perfect silence.


	38. Chapter 38

Sherlock’s arms were wrapped around him, and Q was safe. Safe, and Sherlock’s body was heavy and warm and closed over him like an exoskeleton, like the statues that had guarded the dead in the Entrance Hall.

Q could hear his own breathing, which was odd, he supposed.

Sherlock wasn’t moving. Q shifted slightly, trying to extricate himself. “’Lock, I can’t breathe,” he said, one arm tugged free, the other poking his brother in the ribs. “Oi. _Sherlock_.”

The ground was cold beneath him, damp, and Sherlock was not even twitching; Q took a breath, and moved him with surprising difficulty. Sherlock had forever been a skinny git, and had – apparently – managed to turn into entirely elbows since Q had last seen him.

Q wriggled out from beneath him, and then – only then – did he realise that Sherlock’s eyes were open and glassy.

“Sherlock?”

Q could hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat, deafeningly loud. Sherlock was thin, hollows of his eyes black bruises, not blinking. Still not blinking. Q counted seconds by the thumping volume of his heartbeat and _still Sherlock wasn’t blinking_.

“I…”

Q looked up, shock rendering everything at right angles because Sherlock _could not be dead_ , he couldn’t be.

Silva looked as shocked as Q did.

A spurt of energy sent Q flying for Silva’s throat with a throttled cry, no wand still, just utter desperate _fury_ and the need to destroy the man who had destroyed so much of Q’s life. Him, his relationship, his brother, he had killed his _brother_ , and Q slammed fists into him and wrenched Silva’s wand out of his grip, staggered back with wand extended.

“ _No_.”

Q heard the voice, and didn’t listen. “Avada –”

The green light hit Silva side-on. The man’s lip was split from one of Q’s punches, eyes wide with a type of bemused surprise. The blood from his lip trickled down his cheek, sinking into the grass.

Silva died without a bang, without a whimper.

The spell had not come from Q’s wand.

Q wheeled around, incandescent rage flooding every part of him. “ _I deserved to kill him_ ,” he screeched, feeling pressure crushing from his temples. Mycroft was white and utterly still, utterly composed, and Q wanted to hurt him just for that fact alone. “Why didn’t you let me?! _He killed Sherlock_ , he killed my brother, you _bastard_ , Mycroft, you should have… he k-killed...”

“Your soul is too precious to destroy on a man like that,” Mycroft told him simply.

Q’s scream poured out of him, an unstoppable force, cleaving the sky open. Mycroft’s arms wrapped around him, Q kicking and punching and screaming and sobbing while Mycroft was utterly still, taking every blow Q offered him, perfectly still without question or pause, just holding onto his youngest brother.

Energy seeped out of Q in agonising waves. “I was ready to die,” he whispered, tears falling silently. “It shouldn’t have been...”

Q broke off, breathing not working any more, words falling into screaming waves until his voice had given out, tasting blood in his mouth while Mycroft buried his face into Q’s head and said nothing, did nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Mycroft said, almost inaudibly. “I’m so sorry.”

Q’s body was exhausted, brain stretching to its limits. Q turned to one side, and retched violently, bile and blood, before shaking more than he knew he could, his body utterly out of control.

Eventually, the energy left altogether. Q collapsed entirely.

Mycroft cradled him, as he had when Q was far smaller. “My, I don’t understand,” Q managed, a whimper.

“We were returning here from the Ministry; the spells were down, we Apparated directly into the grounds. He saw you and Silva, and responded far faster than I,” Mycroft replied quietly. “I failed you both.”

Q didn’t reply, didn’t deny it, didn’t move away.

The spell hit before the footsteps could be heard. Mycroft’s body turned rigid, and Q let out a startled cry, toppling out of Mycroft’s arms to near enough fall headlong into Sherlock’s motionless body.

Silva lay a few feet away, mocking him.

“Are you alright?” Bond asked Q urgently. “ _Q_.”

Q looked up at him emptily. “No.”

It wasn’t worth it. None of this was worth it.

No fewer than three wands were facing Mycroft. Q couldn’t understand why for a long moment, before clarity hit, somewhat startlingly: Mycroft was a Death Eater.

Nothing made sense.

The Body-Bind was lifted on Mycroft, who dutifully didn’t move. “Explain,” Bond said curtly, wand extended. “ _Now_.”

“It wasn’t him,” Q snapped, looking at them all, livid faces as they stared at Mycroft, Mycroft who was _not_ the enemy, who had killed Sherlock’s killer but was _also a killer_ , Mycroft was a Death Eater. “This is wrong, this is _all wrong_.”

“Q, you need to calm down.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Q screamed back, body riddling with tension as he looked around to Mycroft. “You don’t understand a _fucking thing_. You left, Mycroft, you _left_ , and I needed you.”

“Sherlock needed me more.”

“ _Look where that fucking got you_ ,” Q shrieked, shaking through every inch of his body, seeing the snake curling up Mycroft’s forearm and looking to Sherlock’s lifeless body and Silva’s patronising little smirk. “You didn’t manage _anything_ , Mycroft. You couldn’t protect me, and you couldn’t protect him, and it had to be _Silva_ , didn’t it. Of all fucking people, _not him_. Not after everything else, not…”

Q tried to breathe, tried to stop himself from beating Mycroft half to death or somehow finding a Time Turner and pushing them back, making it so Sherlock wasn’t a martyr and Mycroft had never left and it was something that Q could understand.

Mycroft’s voice was quiet. Q stared at him.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.”

There was utter silence for a long moment. “No, it isn’t,” Mycroft agreed, voice inches away from cracking.

The others were warily silent. Bill was the first to find words: “Mycroft. You are in our custody for…”

“Obviously not,” Mycroft interjected, neutral as ever. “I joined the Death Eaters for the sole purpose of retrieving Sherlock from their custody. It was my actions that allowed Harry Potter and his fellows into the castle, and it was my decision to kill both Carrows before they joined the battle as a destructive force.”

Q stared at Sherlock’s body, listening to the conversation wash over him. Mycroft had never been a Death Eater. Mycroft had left. Mycroft had raised both of his siblings. Mycroft had killed people. Mycroft had killed Silva. Mycroft hadn’t let Q kill Silva. Mycroft was so many things, and Sherlock was dead.

“You let in Harry?” Arthur asked. “How…?”

“A message, written in lemon juice, sent to Miss Granger,” Mycroft explained tiredly. “A trick I understand only the Order have ever used – there is an accessible tunnel that places the user directly inside the gates, a rabbit hole.”

A murmur; it correlated with Harry’s story. Q didn’t care. Q couldn’t stop staring at Sherlock’s body, scarred and bloodied in places, too thin, too everything. Q knew how it felt. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t _fair_ that both of them had been hurt, Sherlock was worth more than that, _so much more_ than that.

Everybody was talking, and Q could hear the humming of his thoughts, of the desperate and childish belief that Sherlock would twitch, his breathing fall and rise, that he had experimented with something Muggle and stupid that had put him into a coma and he would wake up again, Sherlock _always woke up_.

“Take my hand, Q.”

Q did as he was told, slid a hand into Bond’s, and he was so warm. He almost burnt to touch. Q was so cold he couldn’t shiver any more, was just unresponsive. “He died for me,” Q mumbled. “I’m not worth him. He…”

“Sherlock wished to protect you, as I could not,” Mycroft said, his voice cutting in, sending a jolt of profound anger through Q’s body. “He would never have abided this sentiment. Fight for him.”

Never before in his life had Q seen Mycroft so broken. If only for the slightest of moments, Q could read Mycroft as clearly as Sherlock always could: grief in every line of him, in the half-tremble of ‘sentiment’ and the sharp bite of the command to battle, and the minute shake of his wand hand.

Bill and Arthur were dealing with Sherlock’s body. A stretcher, carrying him to the castle. “We don’t have long,” Bond reminded Q gently, helping him stand, Q himself not looking away from Mycroft.

Q watched Mycroft move to standing, watched the Order hesitate. “You know he’s on our side, just give him back his sodding wand,” Q told them with tired irritation, and saw Mycroft’s glance flick to him in surprise. Q raised an eyebrow, aggressive. “What?”

“You trust me.”

“Look at my abundant options,” Q returned, the acerbity diluted, Bond’s warmth calming him to a point of vague reason. He let out a slow sigh, eyes closed, opening them again to see only Mycroft. “Explain.”

“We need to get back,” Bond repeated.

Q didn’t move his gaze from Mycroft. “Go. We’ll be behind.”

Bond wisely made no attempt to argue, but began heading towards Hogwarts.

The brothers stood with an eternity between them. “You convinced Voldemort you were on his side,” he stated, not asking for confirmation: Mycroft was the most extraordinary Occlumens Q would probably ever know. “Then, what? Broke Sherlock out of the Ministry?”

“Yes,” Mycroft replied.

Q didn’t know what to say. The pair started to walk back up towards the castle, towards the smoking and burning castle; it reflected itself in Q’s glasses and Mycroft’s expression, the pathetic ruin. They walked in silence, broken only by Q’s brief question:

“You still think we’ll lose.”

“That depends entirely on the actions of Harry Potter.”

Mycroft seemed almost surprised by Q’s disparaging snort: Q’s _faith_ in people had died a while ago. The moment Mycroft left, actually, now he thought about it. “Q…”

“I was trapped in Hogwarts, and you did nothing,” Q interjected. “S-Sherlock left, and you went after him without hesitation. Did I just, not mean enough to bother?”

Of course, Mycroft didn’t answer. The one question Q needed an answer to more than anything, and Mycroft had no answer. Q didn’t know how to care. Whether Sherlock had mattered more or mattered less, it didn’t make a difference any more.

It took another minute or so for Mycroft to find any words at all. “You know you mean everything,” he told Q, who could only laugh, actually laugh at the absurdity of it, not breaking step as they entered the light of the courtyard. “Q, you must know that…”

“I ‘must’ know nothing,” Q returned. “I just watched my brother die, I…”

“So did I,” Mycroft snapped, with raw, palpable anger.

Q turned to him with genuine shock. Mycroft was never angry. “Excuse me?”

“I killed four people, in order to even reach Sherlock,” Mycroft told him, with his customary control cracking. “Voldemort is a formidable force. I could not reach you, Q, and I was aware that they would not kill you.”

His laugh resembled something like a cackle now, and Q didn’t care. “Were you?” he asked, with a note of hysteria. “Because I fucking wasn’t. They tortured me, Mycroft, was that not _enough_ for you? Was Silva raping me not enough? What would have constituted _enough_ , or was it simply _enough_ to be Sherlock?”

“Don’t you _ever_ ,” Mycroft told him, in a terrifying tone, “imply that Sherlock was more important than you. Sherlock died this evening to prove you otherwise.”

“Yes, I noticed!”

Mycroft let out a snarl of anger. Q restrained the urge to celebrate: Mycroft was angry, Mycroft was feeling something of the anger that Q had been living and thriving and breathing on for weeks and months, and was now all he had left, Q only had the strength of devastating fury and grief to run on because Merlin knew there was nothing else left.

“Q,” Mycroft tried, with as much control as he could manage. “I do not intend to minimise your experiences, but understand that I had no options but to assess the greater risk. I was aware that you would be tortured, and I was almost certain – although had hoped otherwise – that Silva would escalate matters from previous encounters.”

Q was dangerously still. “You say it clinically,” he said slowly. “The ‘greater risk’ was…?”

“The Death Eaters intended to entire destroy Sherlock’s body and mind,” Mycroft explained quietly. “His eventual death would have been protracted, painful, and undoubtedly public. As witnessed, Sherlock’s torture was initially in front of children. Subsequently, he was being subjected to supposed ‘experimentation’. Finally – it was a simple case of timing.”

For a moment of confusion, Q paused. “Sorry?”

“I know what Harry has been doing these last months. I know – for example – what he is searching for in the castle, or at least, I have an extremely strong suspicion. From the point of his entry into Skyfall, I was able to confirm what I had suspected for a long while.”

“Which was…?”

Mycroft hesitated. Q didn’t bother to hide his derision. “Q, I am not concealing information for any negative…”

“How many _bloody_ people are going to try and make decisions for me?!” Q asked with exhausted anger. “Fuck’s sake. Fine. Lovely. You have every excuse in the world, I’m sure, for why you did everything right. You win. Well done.”

“Q…”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Q interrupted with manufactured flippancy. “Go for it. You know more, you always did. You’re the clever one. So I’m sure you know better than me because everybody does, don’t they? Everybody knows what’s best for me _except for me_ , because I’m the moron who went back to Hogwarts in the first place.”

“I always said I supported…”

“You _say_ a lot of things.”

Mycroft paused, a few steps behind Q. “I always wanted what was best for you both. I understood that what Harry was doing would require assistance.”

Q turned, eyebrow raised. “So what, it wasn’t for _either_ of us?”

“It was for _both of you_ , for the future of…”

“Yes, and look at Sherlock’s future,” Q interrupted, with awful quiet, awful clarity.

Mycroft had nothing to say. His eyes remained heavy on Q’s back, words quiet, an almost inaudible plea as Q continued walking, putting some distance between himself and the person he wanted most to be close to in that moment:

“I tried.”

Q ignored him, and walked into the building without looking back. The Great Hall was rammed tight with people, but had mostly calmed a little. The hour had passed, and they were now waiting for the inevitable.

Q let out an unsteady breath, head pounding. Bond was in front of him immediately, looking him over. “Are you alright?”

“What do you think?” he returned tiredly. “Where’s John?”

“Hello.”

Bond took a half-step back. John’s expression had frozen entirely, although there was a softening of understanding at Q’s comparative reaction; grief does curious things. “I’m sorry,” Q managed, keeping his voice from cracking.

“Not your fault,” John returned neutrally.

“It was,” Q returned immediately. “It wasn’t meant for him, the spell, it was meant for me, he pushed me out the way…”

John’s mouth twitched in the slightest of smiles. “Sherlock being Sherlock,” he completed, cutting Q off. “It’s not your fault. Sherlock Holmes, making all his own decisions because nobody can compete with his massive intellect.”

There was a touch of bitterness that made Q want to shout at him, for daring to be angry at Sherlock, for not being angry with _him_. Q had killed John’s fiancé. By accident, but it was him, Sherlock had sacrificed himself for Q.

Mycroft was met with suspicious looks, outright hostility from some; the Dark Mark was livid black on his forearm, visible to those looking for it, whenever his robes shifted. Q couldn’t stop staring at it, not quite realising.

Q watched him move to Hermione, tap her on the shoulder. “Where is Harry?”

Hermione’s expression changed utterly, concern and fear flitting in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said honestly, as Q slipped nearer curiously. “I haven’t seen him, I think he went to look at Snape’s memories…”

“Snape?”

A small nod. “He’s dead, Voldemort killed him,” Hermione explained, “and left his memories to Harry, so… I don’t know where he is. He’ll be back. He knows what he’s doing.”

Q couldn’t bring himself to hold faith in the way Hermione still could. From wherever the trio had been, they had not lived in Hogwarts, and they had only brushed the edges of the regime. There was no doubting that they had been through a lot, far too much for children their age, but Q was honestly past the stage of sympathy.

He left Hermione without another word, seeking out Bond; he was stood with the remaining survivors of the adults, everybody from Ginny Weasley through to Fleur, Kingsley, the Hogwarts staff.

“What’s the plan?” he asked calmly. Bond made some noise of objection to Q’s involvement, everybody else looked dubious. Q did not bother to grace it with any form of response. They could all fuck off.

Minerva was the one to speak. “We need to hold the Hall,” she explained. “The attack is imminent. Q, join Bond’s faction.”

Bond amplified his voice, booming out across the Hall. “To your stations, everybody,” he called. “We have less than two minutes.”

Everybody scattered. Most were going to the Entrance Hall, anticipating an attack from the Forest, as it had the previous primary focus.

“Be safe, Q.”

Q stilled, closing his eyes briefly.

Mycroft had brought him up. Mycroft had looked after him, agreed to help change his name and had never, not even once, called him by his birth name since. Mycroft had listened to every one of Q’s complaints over the years, held him when he cried, looked after him when nobody else could.

It had always been Mycroft, above and beyond anybody else, that Q could trust. Mycroft never lied to him.

“It’s always the greater good with you, isn’t it?” Q stated sadly. “It was always the difference between the pair of you – Sherlock loves, fuck, loved, me. You too. He refused to say it because he’s ashamed of it, and you, you don’t actually feel it, do you?”

Mycroft’s eyes were slightly wide with something close to horror. “Q, of course I feel it,” he replied. “I am not demonstrative because it would achieve nothing, and because to state ‘love’ has connotations, expectations. I cannot promise you that I will always place you first. There are approximately fifty dead in this room alone. That is fifty families. I cannot justify the grief of all those in the Wizarding world, and that requires sacrifices.”

Q raised an eyebrow. “The ‘greater good’,” he repeated, with a loaded edge: everybody knew those words, the shadow of the last Dark wizard who had threatened their world. “Should it surprise me?”

“The difference is that the sacrifices are my own,” Mycroft replied, with awful softness. “I will live with the loss of both my brothers. I will never have a partner, or a family, for the same reason I will never tell you that I love you. My actions have – I hope – more than amply illustrated my sentiments.”

“What’s the point of caring at all?” Q asked, his aggression beginning to temper very slightly. “You don’t have anything to care _for_. What’s the _point_?”

“I save others – many others – the pain you feel in this moment. Is that not a point in itself?”

“ _I can’t live like that_.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Mycroft cut in, over the top of Q’s palpable distress. “I would never ask that of you. I protect the people I care for primarily, but if I am forced to choose, I have the capacity to do what others do not.”

Q shook his head slightly, looking Mycroft up and down as though he couldn’t recognise the man. “You can’t live a life playing numbers, it’s not… that’s not how people work, Mycroft.”

A raised eyebrow, and a very small smile. “And yet, here I am.”

Somewhere in the distance, there was a noise, something that sounded ominously like cheering. Above them, the bell rang; the allotted hour had passed, and they were coming back.

Q couldn’t believe how much could change in one hour.

“We must go,” Mycroft said formally, and nodded towards the door. “Be safe.”

Mycroft’s entire body stiffened instantly at the feel of Q, reaching out for him, grasping him. “Please be careful.”

“I will,” Mycroft murmured, with utter profundity, and followed Q towards the Entrance Hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you saw that coming, I commend you. Lex threw things at me when she read it. I didn't have sex for a week. I hope you guys enjoyed it, and I am incredibly excited to hear your thoughts. Jen.


	39. Chapter 39

The cheering was getting louder as Mycroft and Q reached the Entrance Hall. Bond was watching for them, relief drawn through him as he saw Q arrive, step forward to link their hands, fingers twining. There was nothing more that could be said. There was nothing left but to fight for everybody who had already been lost, for the people who could still be lost, families and children, and they would die for a world better than this, for Teddy Lupin and Muggles and Wizards alike, they had to win, had to keep Harry Potter safe so that Voldemort would be defeated and the world could start to recover.

The noise burst out of the Forbidden Forest, a crowd of bodies swarming across the grounds, deafening.

It had begun.

There was something odd, that much was obvious almost immediately; they weren’t trying to cast, to attack. Instead, they approached like people who had long-since won.

The voice boomed out across the grounds.

"Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone. The battle is won.”

It was over. 

“You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together."

No voices, nothing. The castle was echoingly silent. Nobody wanted to believe it.

The Death Eaters came closer. Bond’s grip became a fraction tighter around Q’s hand, and they watched, silent and wary, the swarm expanding to fill the space. They were pitifully outnumbered.

Hagrid was sobbing, cradled over a broken form that was recognisable as they slid closer, as light fell on the dead body of Harry Potter.

Minerva screamed, an awful, wrenching sound. Bond didn’t move. Q didn’t have anything left in him, no energy to scream or grieve or panic. He would fight Voldemort with everything he had in him, until the last, regardless of Harry.

The poor boy had deserved so much better. Q hoped he had died quickly.

Q had never seen Voldemort in person. It was somehow surreal. He didn’t look human, which Q supposed was to be expected, but all the same. This was the man – the single man – who had destroyed so much.

Bellatrix was laughing as there were more voices, the screams of the people who had loved Harry most, who had and would always love him. Q still couldn’t move. Bond’s hand stayed. Bellatrix saw them, and snorted derisively, before her eyes scanned further back.

“Mycroft. Such a pity.”

Mycroft’s expression was flat, and the noise was phenomenal, everybody screaming at the Death Eaters and Voldemort himself; they would never be defeated, this would not be accepted by a single one of them.

A _bang_ , Voldemort screeching for silence, and the imposed silence duly fell.

“You see?" said Voldemort, and strode backward and forward right beside the place where Harry lay. "Harry Potter is dead! Do you understand now, deluded ones? He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him!"

"He beat you!" yelled Ron, and the charm broke, and the defenders of Hogwarts were shouting and screaming again until a second, more powerful bang extinguished their voices once more.

"He was killed while trying to sneak out of the castle grounds," said Voldemort, it was a lie, they all knew it was a lie. “Killed while trying to save himself…”

Neville broke out, and Q immediately flinched out of his utter stillness to stop him, to pull him back; too late, as the boy was Disarmed and grunted with pain, wand flying out of his hand.

"And who is this?" he said in his soft snake's hiss. "Who has volunteered to demonstrate what happens to those who continue to fight when the battle is lost?"

Q’s eyes darted to Minerva, to Bond; they were going to kill him, and he was damned if he would let them. 

Bellatrix’s voice rang out, high and delighted. "It is Neville Longbottom, my Lord! The boy who has been giving the Carrows so much trouble! The son of the Aurors, remember?"

"Ah, yes, I remember," said Voldemort, looking down at Neville, who was struggling back to his feet, unarmed and unprotected, standing in the no-man's-land between the survivors and the Death Eaters. "But you are a pureblood, aren't you, my brave boy?"

_Clever boy_.

Q let go of Bond’s hand.

"So what if I am?" said Neville loudly.

"You show spirit and bravery, and you come of noble stock. You will make a very valuable Death Eater. We need your kind, Neville Longbottom."

"I'll join you when hell freezes over," said Neville. "Dumbledore's Army!"

There were screams, cheers from the crowd, all of the old DA. 

“We fight,” Neville confirmed, voice firm and victorious, even while staring down Voldemort himself. The crowd cheered again, echoing the sentiment, and Q found his own voice joining the masses, screaming out just to be heard, to prove that he wouldn’t be defeated either.

Another bang, and silence.

“If that is your choice, Longbottom, we revert to the original plan. On your head," Voldemort said quietly, with more danger than Q had ever heard, "be it”

Voldemort waved his wand; Q reached out on instinct, but nothing happened.

Seconds later, out of one of the castle's shattered windows, something that looked like a misshapen bird flew through the half light and landed in Voldemort's hand. He shook the mildewed object by its pointed end and it dangled, empty and ragged: the Sorting Hat.

"There will be no more Sorting at Hogwarts School," said Voldemort. "There will be no more Houses. The emblem, shield and colours of my noble ancestor, Salazar Slytherin, will suffice everyone. Won't they, Neville Longbottom?"

Everybody watched as Voldemort pointed his wand at Neville, who grew rigid and still, then forced the hat onto Neville's head, so that it slipped down below his eyes. Q could sense something, something awful, and took another step forward; the Death Eaters seemed to pre-empt it, holding them at bay.

"Neville here is now going to demonstrate what happens to anyone foolish enough to continue to oppose me," said Voldemort, and with a flick of his wand, he caused the Sorting Hat to burst into flames.

Screams split the dawn, and Neville was a flame, rooted to the spot, unable to move.

Q didn’t care what they did to him. He – and he felt others move at his trigger – ran forward, before Q was roughly wrenched back by a firm hand and pushed back, toppling into Mycroft’s arms.

There was an uproar from the distant boundary of the school, and Q watched with disbelief as a cascade of centaurs fell upon the Death Eaters In the same moment, a younger giant came lumbering around the side of the castle and yelled, "HAGGER!" His cry was answered by roars from Voldemort's giants, who instantly attacked. Neville managed to break free of the Body-Bind, the hat falling away from him, replaced by a flash of silver.

Mycroft was silent and still with the calm of an impending tsunami. Silently, he lifted his wand, and with an abrupt movement, cast a sweeping spell over the Death Eaters in a swift horizontal line.

The resulting force pushed them instantly back, some becoming briefly airborne and hitting walls and rubble with inaudible crunches. Voldemort and some of the more experienced Death Eaters moved fast enough to cast protective charms. Hagrid was mercifully robust enough to survive it with little more than a holler of pain, but then started bellowing about Harry’s body vanishing.

The Death Eaters were confused and scattered and unconscious; Mycroft deflected a curse with a bored derision, and suddenly, Neville was in determined motion. Q watched in disbelief as he lifted the sword of Gryffindor, and sliced off the head of the monstrous snake that had been – until moments ago – curved around Voldemort’s body

Voldemort screamed, inaudible in the chaos, and lifted his wand to curse Neville; Q broke out, screaming out spells that seemed to come without effort, without concentrating.

The fighting moved swiftly indoors, simply because outside was a mess of giants and centaurs alike, trampling one another.

Q felt every part of him beat faster, move faster. Nobody else would die today. Nobody else.

Mycroft was beautiful and awful, curses lifting still-masked Death Eaters and smashing them against distant walls, eyes black and emotionless.

Q couldn’t help but wonder how far Mycroft had splintered his soul to keep his world, the people he loved safe. Mycroft did love, he loved so much it broke him into the pieces Q could see forming; every death, every hurt, _everything_ lent him the strength to destroy and avenge with a cold consistency Voldemort himself equalled.

All of the fighters had found a power they hadn’t had before. Harry Potter’s death would never stop them, this was about more than one boy: this was about their futures and their worlds and their loved ones, and they would never stop fighting, never.

It seemed apt that Q wound up fighting Voldemort himself. He, Minerva, and James. Mycroft was occupied dispatching a dozen other cloaked figures, with a ferocity that no other equalled. Students were duelling en masse, Bellatrix locked in combat with students Q couldn’t see.

A gunshot; Q knew guns, certainly knew how to recognise his own. Utterly confused Death Eaters crumpling and finished off with a spell for those John didn’t kill straight off.

Q would have laughed if he could, if he could do anything more than fight, spells and charms flying out of him in an endless stream as jets of light streamed inches from his skin, a heartbeat from impact.

The terror and exhilaration of it flooded Q’s body. So close to the end, if he could get one more, _one more_ curse, he could end it, he could end _all of it_. They were more evenly matched now, with the Order and the centaurs and the giants distracted, they stood a chance, more than just a chance.

“NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!”

Q couldn’t see what had happened, but Bellatrix was laughing and snarling, and Molly Weasley was livid and screaming.

It was quick, in the end. Bellatrix’s voice cut off mid-laugh, and Voldemort’s anger exploded with a force that transcended even Mycroft’s lethal precision; Q flew backwards, along with Bond and Minerva, scattered like rubble.

“ _Harry_!”

Q almost fell over himself in the need to look, to see if it was true; Harry stood in the centre, opposite Voldemort himself, the pair circling as Q picked himself up. The Hall was utterly silent, listening to the pair exchange words Q was only half-listening to.

"I don't want anyone else to help," Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."

Bond looked around for Q, his expression visibly terrified for a moment before confirming: Q was safe, he was alright. Mycroft was still, calm, barely a hair out of place despite the damage he had wrought but seeking Q with the same intensity as Bond.

Q nodded, and looked over Mycroft with a query of his own. Mycroft dipped his head; he was alright. Q gave him the smallest of smiles, his heart pulsing in his throat, inches from death and _Merlin_ but it was a hell of a way to remind anybody about their priorities. Regardless of what had passed, Mycroft would always be his brother.

"Accidents!" screamed Voldemort; Q cringed at the sudden volume, twisting to watch, to scan over the crowds. Most were frozen in place. It was at the back, at the fringes, that the adults and Order members flicked gazes around to see the living, to see the injured, to find those they loved and make certain that they were safe.

Harry’s voice carried, clear and confident, and difficult to believe: "You won't be killing anyone else tonight. You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people…”

"But you did not!"

“I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"

"You dare…”

"Yes, I dare," said Harry. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"

Q couldn’t breathe, and could only see or hear or _think_ of Sherlock. Sherlock, who had always professed to have no heart at all. Sherlock, who had gone further than anybody, and _actually_ died for love. He had loved so ridiculously much he had decided to martyr himself and Q had never hated him so much for it.

"Is it love again?" said Voldemort, his snake's face jeering. "Dumbledore’s favourite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter, and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?"

Mycroft glanced to Q. John, meanwhile, had slipped down the stairs to join Q and Bond, unnoticed, the sole Muggle amongst the greatest Wizarding battle in history. Harry and Voldemort continued to speak. Q couldn’t move away from Bond’s side, nor look anywhere but Mycroft, who was so horribly still, and looked as hollow as Q felt.

"Just one thing," said Harry, and Q prayed that he knew what he was doing.

"If it is not love that will save you this time," said Voldemort, "you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"

"I believe both.”

Voldemort’s laugh was cruel and humourless; Bond moved a half-step closer to Q, his warmth seeping into his skin. Harry was bluffing. He had to be. Q could do little more than look around and see who was left of the fighters, see who he would be able to Apparate out or defend in some way or another. John, primarily, who was still the eye of the storm. Motionless in a very different to Mycroft; John’s was a taught bowstring, where Mycroft’s was the calm accessed only through extremes. Numb, in a way.

So many of the students believed so blindly in Harry Potter that Q supposed they didn’t _begin_ to imagine that this would go wrong.

Q had certainly established that one can never place all belief in one person. Not Dumbledore, not Harry Potter. Not even those who seem untouchable.

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!" Voldemort screamed, voice grating.

"You thought you did," said Harry, "but you were wrong."

The entire crowd stirred, a wave of motion as they responded, a recoil of naked hope: Dumbledore being alive, them _all_ having been wrong. Their saviour not a teenage boy, but the greatest wizard who had ever lived.

"Dumbledore is dead! I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore is dead," said Harry calmly, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."

"What childish dream is this?"

"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledore's. Dumbledore's from the moment you starting hunting down my mother. And you never realized it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"

Q let out a small sigh, almost unnoticeable. It made sense. Snape’s actions suddenly made sense, the oddities, the _chances_ to allow Q to change his own circumstances: Snape had never tried to save him, but had given him the choice to save himself.

“… Dumbledore was already dying when Snape finished him!"

"It matters not!" shrieked Voldemort, with another cackle of mad laughter. "It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore's, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed them as I crushed your mother, Snape's supposed great love! Oh, but it all makes sense, Potter, and in ways that you do not understand! Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Snape should be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy…”

_Clever boy_

The shiver ran through Q’s body, and Bond’s hand was warm as he very deliberately held onto Q, keeping him upright, the pair watching transfixed.

“I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"

"Yeah, it did." said Harry. "You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you think what you've done.... Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle...."

Q’s eyes widened, and he felt Bond’s small intake of breath, saw the twitch in Mycroft’s wand hand.

"What is this?"

"It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left.... I've seen what you'll be otherwise.... Be a man... try... Try for some remorse...."

“You _dare_ …”

"Yes, I dare," said Harry, "because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired on me at all. It's backfired on you, Riddle. "That wand still isn't working properly for you because you murdered the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."

"He killed…”

"Aren't you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended to die, undefeated, the wand's last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"

"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort's voice shook with malicious pleasure. "I stole the wand from its last master's tomb! I removed it against the last master's wishes! Its power is mine!"

"You still don't get it, Riddle, do you?”

Q had to confess, he didn’t have the slightest clue either.

“… Possessing the wand isn't enough! Holding it, using it, doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Ollivander? The wand chooses the wizard... The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done, or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance..."

Voldemort, the Hall, everybody present hung on every syllable.

"… the true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."

Q, and the rest of the Hall, were honestly so confused for a moment that the words didn’t seem to make sense. Q briefly wondered if he’d just heard Parseltongue. Judging by Voldemort’s expression, he was just as confused, although covered it better.

"But what does it matter?" he said softly. "Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: we duel on skill alone… and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy..."

"But you're too late," said Harry. "You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took his wand from him."

Q’s eyes, everybody’s, fell on Harry’s – on _Draco’s_ \- wand. Q half-recognised it, wondering distantly what it meant that Harry had ‘overpowered’ him, whether Harry had broken a little too far while trying to defeat Voldemort, and _Merlin above_ he hoped Harry knew what the hell he was doing.

"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does... I am the true master of the Elder Wand."

The two yelled their spells in unison, green towards red. They impacted with a cannon-like noise, golden light erupting across the Hall.

Q felt Bond wrench him inwards, protecting him from the blinding light at the force of the spells that crashed inwards like lightning-bolts, neither prepared to believe that it could truly be it. That it would come down to two spells, two people, after weeks and months and _years_ of loss, that it was really so _petty_.

Yet the silence fell, and there was a quiet and anticlimactic thump, as Voldemort’s lifeless body hit the ground.

Light blazed over the Hall, and cheers erupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for your unbelievable and humbling support. Jen.


	40. Chapter 40

The war was over. The Wizarding world was, at least for now, safe: Voldemort was dead, his lifeless body empty and pathetically small on the rubble-strewn floor.

Harry was immediately swamped with people, hugging him, pouncing on him with desperate embraces, trying to somehow communicate their gratitude, their relief, their grief at all that had been lost and all that could now be saved.

Q still had very little idea what had actually happened. He could safely say he simply didn’t understand. Everything had moved extremely fast, and now, he – like many of the older fighters – was left immediately having to consider what came next.

The celebrations were well and good, but the dawn was breaking on a world that needed rebuilding from the ground upwards. There was no Ministry, no government, no law enforcement. Death Eaters needed to be captured, tracked down, imprisoned until such a time as a trial could be held, and that also meant finding a jury now the Wizengamot was disbanded. Muggles and Wizards alike needed to be restored to their homes.

First, however, Q was wrapped in an insistent collection of hugs, celebrating for at least a moment or two. Bond kissed him in the dazzling light, Q threading fingers through his hair and crying without realising, sheer relief.

Bond was alive. The war was over, and they were both alive, and _would not be hurt again_. It had been a very long handful of years. Never again would Q have to deal with Raoul Silva, with Bellatrix, with Cruciatus Curses and the constant clawing threat of loss.

“I love you,” Q told Bond, with an insistency that throbbed through his voice. “I love you so much.”

Bond kissed him again, as the cheers continued around them, almost screams in their pitch, a deafening flood of noise. They could go _home_.

Q pulled back, and let Bond’s arms crush him close, his own arms twined around Bond, inextricably linked. The world could turn to hell and back, but Q would always have this, Bond’s warmth and care and the _there_ -ness of his touch. 

“Ahem?”

They pulled apart, looking to John. Without hesitation, Q all but threw himself at the other man; John nearly toppled over, but smiled all the same, hugging Q back. “It’s over, then?” he asked.

Bond shrugged sideways. “Now, we start the clean-up,” he sighed. “There’s a lot to do…”

“How’s the bite?”

“The _what_?” Bond asked, turning to Q with frank alarm.

Q smiled nervously, and raised his forearm. “May have got a little bit bitten by a werewolf. It’s okay,” he continued quickly, as Bond’s complexion went every colour under the sun in quick succession. “Unturned at the time, so mostly got bitten by a not-very-happy human with feral qualities. John?”

“I’ll monitor, but given Bill, I don’t think there’s much to worry about for now. I need to get back to the Hall, speaking of which,” John said abruptly. “I think some are being shipped out to St Mungo’s, Fred needs better care than we can give him here, and Parvati, I think her name is? She’s been hit with a jinx we can’t recognise… anyway. Can’t really join the celebrations.”

“A lot of us cannot,” a voice noted gravely. “All three of you – we need to move quickly. Doctor Watson, if you could return to the Hall? Molly is looking for you.”

John nodded, and slipped away, with a smile towards Q and Bond. “We’ll talk about it later,” Bond murmured to Q, who shivered slightly; he had almost forgotten Sherlock for a moment, with everything else. The war was over, truly _over_. “Minerva?”

Minerva stood, looking radiantly happy barring the crease of authority in her forehead. “Kingsley and Mycroft have returned to the Ministry; I believe Kingsley will be appointed interim Minister for Magic. Mycroft is planning the relocation of Muggles, he will organise that, I believe…”

“We’re happy letting Mycroft do that?”

Minerva raised an eyebrow. “Should we not be?” she returned, without judgement. “He did it for you, Q, you know that.”

“Of course I know that,” Q replied curtly, letting the joy that swamped the room wash over him in comforting waves, Bond’s hand tight in his. Q did not want to think about Mycroft in that moment. It was too much. 

Abruptly, Q remembered: “Where are the Malfoys?”

“The Hall. Draco’s being remarkably helpful, from what I’ve seen so far… I should ask whether anybody’s dealing with arrests, not quite sure where they’ll go with the Ministry a mess and Azkaban out of action…”

“Arthur?” Bond suggested; Minerva just gave a shrugging, rather uncertain nod. “In any case, he’ll know people who can…”

Q interrupted, his voice unwavering. “Draco goes back under Order protection, along with Narcissa, she never fought, I’m not even sure she has the Dark Mark. Draco told me Voldemort tortured her, too. They are _not_ going to Azkaban,” he stated, waiting for the answering nods. 

All at once, the tension left his body, and Q gave himself a moment. “Okay – I’m gonna go find a toilet that hasn’t been blown up, then I’ll be back with you for what we do now…”

Bond nodded. “We need to move Voldemort’s body,” he said, a little darkly. “Minerva?”

“The side room off the Hall,” she suggested. Bond gave an answering nod, and Q slipped out, looking through the utter devastation of a place he had always loved. “ _Harry_.”

Harry moved towards them, visibly exhausted, older than Q could imagine a seventeen-year-old could be. “Are you alright?” he asked the three of them, with a tangible gravity that broke Q’s heart a little. Bodies kept swamping him, more people pressing in to see him and touch him, thank him, show their gratitude, sob into his arms while Harry himself just tried to weather the storm.

“Fine,” Q nodded, with Bond’s hand still tightly holding his. “We’ll be fine. I’d say move into the Great Hall…”

Harry nodded tiredly, and smiled at them all. “Thank you,” he said to them all, ringing sincerity.

Minerva shook her head in disbelief, and wrapped the boy into a quick hug. Harry looked so surprised he froze for a second before, slowly, returning it. “Albus would have been so proud,” she told him. “You are extraordinary, Potter.”

Harry snorted a bit. “Call me Harry, Professor,” he returned teasingly, and nodded to Bond and Q. “I should go, deal with…”

“Of course,” Q nodded. “Harry – it’s us who need to thank you. I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to go through, you…”

“We all have,” Harry replied quietly, voice almost lost in the still-melee of voices. “See you in a bit.”

Harry vanished almost immediately, swallowed by the next wave of people. Q watched him with sad sympathy, before glancing back to Bond, sliding their hands apart and disappearing into the wreckage of his once-home.

The corridors were a mess of bloodstains and dust and broken glass. Decapitated statues lay in heaps, moaning exaggeratedly at one another. Portraits swung with great rips in their canvases, their occupants long gone. The ghosts moved with quiet concern, barring Peeves who – predictably – was crowing from the ceiling and lobbing glitter-filled balloons at everybody in the vicinity.

Q eventually located a bathroom on the second floor. It was hardly well-constructed any longer, but would do as far as Q was concerned.

He was washing his hands when he heard a voice from behind him. “For all of Mycroft’s pontificating about immortality, he never quite considered this option, did he?”

Q nearly collapsed. As it was, he propped himself up on the sink, eyes wide and wild as he looked over the new arrival. “ _Oh fuck_.”

Sherlock grinned. Q stared at him, breath hitching with absolute breathless and _confused_ terror, at least before the terror had made some sense, but Sherlock could not be here. Sherlock was dead.

Of course, Sherlock just looked _smug_. “I do feel this was one of my more inspired ideas…”

“ _How_?!” Q managed, and reached out to him.

Q’s hand fell through Sherlock’s, with a cold and somehow wet sensation.

“Oh,” Q breathed, and felt tears unwillingly blur his vision: Sherlock was not alive. In spite of his apparent presence – and he was bizarrely solid-looking – he was not alive. The disappointment was crushing. “Oh Merlin, Sherlock. What have you _done_?”

Sherlock still looked ridiculously, bizarrely proud of himself. “I spoke to Peeves,” he explained musingly. “I was imprisoned in Hogwarts, for a while, before they moved me to the Ministry. We chatted.”

“ _Nobody_ ‘chats’ to Peeves, he’s a psychopath!”

“And I’m a high-functioning sociopath; we got on rather well, I must admit,” Sherlock smirked. “In any case: I am more than a ghost, and less than a person. I am a poltergeist. It was vital that I was able to manipulate matter around me – the boredom would be absurd, otherwise – and thus, Peeves explained to me in – admittedly confused – fragments, how he became a poltergeist.”

Q blinked. “A poltergeist?” he echoed, hollowly. “So you’re going to… cause chaos, be trouble, be…”

“What I was in life?” Sherlock completed. “Yes, I should think so. I believe I am tied to Hogwarts, although I shall be testing those parameters fairly shortly…”

Q still hadn’t moved, standing paralysed in front of the sinks, looking over Sherlock’s form. He had found real clothing, which only served to create a contrast between his slightly-incorporeal body and the tangible _reality_ of what he was wearing. “I’m hoping to retrieve my coat,” Sherlock commented drily, as Q looked over him speechlessly, feeling an absurd urge to laugh. “You do not seem overly _relieved_ …”

“… I don’t know _what_ to think,” Q admitted, voice trembling slightly. “Fuck. _Fuck_. You need to find Mycroft, John…”

“No.”

Sherlock looked urgent suddenly, eyes widening. Q’s brows contracted. “What?”

“You cannot tell John.”

Q blinked, unable to stop himself gaping slightly. “What do you _mean_ , I can’t tell John?” he repeated, utterly confused. “You… he’s going to mourn for you, he loves you, you _have_ to tell him…”

“I know,” Sherlock interrupted, a heaviness, a sadness in his expression that broke Q’s heart a little. “However – it is cruel in the extreme, to allow him to fall in love with a ghost. I am not… _tangible_ , not enough. John deserves better than that, would you not agree?”

“I think he should decide for himself,” Q broached.

Sherlock smiled faintly. “You know John. My steadfast soldier. He will not leave. I will not allow him to love something that is not real. I am an echo, and John requires something real – I know him well enough to establish that fact. Perhaps someday I shall inform him of my current state of being, but certainly for now, John may move on uninterrupted. You must understand, although it upsets you.”

Q closed his eyes for a moment. He had no idea how he would manage to _not_ tell John. 

“You’re here,” Q whispered instead, filtering those thoughts away somewhere and being selfish for a little while. “ _Only you_ , you stupid bastard.”

“Stupid?” Sherlock echoed, aggrieved. “An innovation not previously considered…”

“ _Eternity_ , Sherlock,” Q reminded him. “You’re going to be alive _forever_.”

Sherlock looked at Q impassively, unperturbed by the faint histrionics. “That was rather the point,” he stated drily. “Mycroft, as I mentioned, has dabbled in immortality more than most – he understands this mentality. It is only you, I think…”

“And when you’re three hundred and have _never_ had a relationship, or been in love with anybody, or had a life?” Q suggested, as levelly as he could.

The concept of immortality horrified Q beyond measure. Dead forever. True, Sherlock had done well to ensure he could sort-of interact with the world, but he would never _touch_ truly, would never feel the warmth of another person. “How does it all…”

“… work?” Sherlock completed. “An excellent question, and one I have no answer to as of yet. I cannot touch, yet I can handle objects. It is a curious sensation to describe. I have a theory that intent is the key factor in…”

“I can’t do this right now,” Q managed, and sat down in the centre of the bathroom. 

Sherlock looked at him with shocked distaste. “You’ve sat down.”

“Well observed.”

“Why?”

Q glared up at him. “After a certain point, all of this bollocks becomes a bit difficult to deal with,” he said drily. “I watched you die. I thought you were dead. Lots of people _are_ dead, Sherlock, and you…”

To Q’s surprise, Sherlock’s expression contracted slightly. “I forget,” he murmured, silencing Q mid-word. “You are far more emotionally attuned than I, and far more so than Mycroft. I have done you a disservice to assume you would adjust to this instantly. My sincere apologies, Q.”

Sherlock knelt in front of him. Q could feel the slight brush of the man’s scarf, the notable lack of heat. “Sounds stupid,” he mumbled, “but ‘lock, I’m never going to be able to hug you again, and that’s just _shit_ , you’ve always hated it anyway…”

“Yes, my undead state is – in fact – an elaborate way to avoid physical contact,” Sherlock smirked.

In the mounting dawn, Sherlock’s eyes were the right colour. Storms on an ocean, even if only for the shortest of seconds. “We won the war,” Q pointed out to Sherlock, and giggled slightly, unable to tear his eyes away from Sherlock.

A small part of him was getting louder with the consideration: he could be dreaming, hallucinating. Maybe his sanity had just fallen over the edge. Maybe this was the last time he would ever speak to Sherlock and he couldn’t bear the thought, he didn’t want to let go.

“So I established,” Sherlock smiled, so close, Q should have been able to touch him. “And you are alive.”

“You absolute _fuck_ ,” Q said abruptly, fiercely, snarling at his now-alarmed brother. “You _died for me_ , did you not even _vaguely_ consider how that would affect me?”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Well yes. I considered it preferable that you self-flagellated while alive, rather than dead. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Fucking _martyr complex_ , I was, _my life is not more important_.”

“Which is why I’m not dead,” Sherlock nodded, and Q could have screamed: he was not dead, no, but he wasn’t sodding alive either. “Q – I will never live to harm another. My magic does not exist. My transport will endure indefinitely. This is an ideal, Q, the ultimate ideal.”

Q shook his head slowly. “You’re still an absolute idiot,” he said sadly. “Even dead, you’re an _absolute_ idiot. Bit bloody late now, I suppose, but… fuck’s sake, Sherlock. Give it a few years, and you’ll… Merlin above, John’s going to…”

“Stop,” Sherlock said firmly, impassively. “My decision, Q. You are alive. I am what I wish to be. It has to be enough.”

“And John? Mycroft?”

Sherlock couldn’t restrain a smirk at the mention of their eldest sibling. “I have no doubt Mycroft will be righteously furious at my state, but it is hardly his concern. As to John, I have made my position quite clear.”

“You’re not being fair.”

A quirked eyebrow raise. “Is there any facet of this that _is_ fair?”

“Sherlock…”

“Don’t be angry at Mycroft,” Sherlock interrupted. Q fell utterly, entirely silent. “You will be, but do not be. Try to remember that for all his ineptitude with emotional matters, Mycroft feels as acutely as any of us – he has been literally branded for life, will endure the contempt of many around him, will be in some danger for a considerable amount of time. Forgive him. He will need you, believe it or not.”

“But…”

“Q?”

Sherlock glanced to the door and vanished through the nearest wall – clothes and all, Merlin alone knew how – and Q could only let out a sharp and somewhat desperate cry.

Bond kicked open the door, wand extended, immediately finding Q’s form knotted on the floor. “What happened?” he asked urgently, eyes roaming around the bathroom and finding nothing whatsoever to worry about, everything was quiet.

“Sherlock.”

Immediately, Bond’s body softened. “Q…”

“No, you knob,” Q interrupted, with a slightly teasing smile. “Not… he’s a ghost, James. Sherlock’s come back as a ghost. _Sherlock_.”

There was no reply for a moment. Q could actually read the scepticism and worry in Bond’s body; he thought Q had finally lost his mind. Not an unreasonable fear, under the circumstances, but Q would have appreciated a little more faith. “Q…”

“Good morning, Bond.”

Bond went white. Q had never seen Bond actually go white before. “… Sherlock.”

Sherlock was smirking obnoxiously, as Bond visibly tried to cling onto whatever was left of his sanity. “It’s a pleasure to see you too.”

“ _John_.”

“Is that the _only_ thing anybody can find to say to me?” Sherlock said, with a touch of petulance. “I’ve managed to _not be dead_. Isn’t _that_ more important, in the long run? John will heal, if he is allowed to.”

“What…”

“I’ll explain,” Q filled in weakly. “I’d better go find Mycroft, he’ll have a field day. I just… I think I’ve reached saturation point. I’m really, _really_ hungry.”

Bond smiled, reaching for Q’s hand. “The House Elves have put together everything you could ever wish for, including steak.”

Q made an absolutely filthy noise. Sherlock looked rather repulsed. “I’ll come back soon,” Q told him, shaking slightly, still terrified that if he left for even a second, he would never come back. “You’ll be here?”

Sherlock nodded, with a gravity that Q believed in instantly: he would stay, he would be present. Q would not have to mourn him, even if the rest of the world did. Q’s brother was where nobody could hurt him again.

“Get me out of here,” Q asked Bond exhaustedly, and let his husband guide him away, his hand impossibly warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As this is a Harry Potter tribute, through and through, there will be an epilogue. I can only hope it is received better than JKR's epilogue.  
> Thank you, as ever.


	41. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is the 15th March. 
> 
> Two years ago today, I began Docendo Discimus, with no comprehension of how much it would sprawl or how much would be written or how it would be received. Over 200,000 words later, and two years, here we are. The Epilogue. I have spent the entire time since the last chapter editing and re-editing and avoiding saying goodbye to this series.
> 
> Hope you enjoy. Jen.

_**Nineteen Years Later…** _

August had crept up on Q without him really noticing.

The final keystrokes marked the end of an overlong and immensely boring set of documents required to finalise the Hogwarts admissions the next morning; King’s Cross had been a very good idea when the Muggle world was less dependent on trains, but really, trying to negotiate hundreds of Wizards in a confined space with at least thirty terrorist threats a year on average was a monumental pain in the backside.

Thus, Q had strongly suggested that – rather than the Hogwarts Express, iconic though it was – some students could take buses instead. Easier to conceal, less infringement on the Muggle world, and Q’s life became considerably easier when he wasn’t trying to ensure half of London wasn’t blown up with the entirety of England’s wizarding talent.

Still; Bond was organising the customary deployment of Aurors to various pertinent locations – hence arduous paperwork that Q emailed over with a smirk of satisfaction – before the train arrived, after which the entire Auror, Transportation and Muggle Concealment departments of the Ministry could sleep for a little while.

Q glanced up, as the door of their house slammed open. The slamming was how Q knew that it was not husband, but erstwhile son that had just entered. “Be nice to the door,” Q called. “It’s a nice door, deserves better.”

“… and if I catch you and Victoire being _quite_ so demonstrative again, I will personally block any of your attempts to be involved in the Auror office,” Bond was snapping. “And if you _dare_ Apparate on me mid-sentence again…”

“Sorry,” Teddy griped, with a lack of conviction that made Q suppress a smirk with difficulty.

Teddy. Their adopted son and bane of entire existences and best decision they had ever made. Teddy, whose hair turned scarlet when he was angry and bright bottle blue when happy, a buzzcut when he fancied being difficult, and tattoos that swum in and out of existence from second to minute and back again, more jagged when the moon rose and Teddy felt his heartbeat quicken.

Whisp had adored Teddy with all her heart and soul. Tart of a cat. Q missed her ferociously.

Teddy was now an obvious candidate for the Auror Office, as his mother had been, as his parents now were: head of the Auror Office, and the Quartermaster. Becoming an Auror was written into Teddy Bond quite completely.

“I’m in love with her.”

Teddy looked very adamant on this fact. Q humoured him; it seemed only fair. “I’m glad to hear it,” he replied calmly. “Is she in love with you?”

“Not sure.”

Q tried not to smirk, as he lazily flicked the kettle on with a wand wave. His aim had dramatically improved over the years, once the spasms had gone and he’d practised a fair bit; true, he had developed a proclivity for red meat in the immediate aftermath of the War, but all things considered, it could have been worse. Bond had always liked steak. It became something of a family tradition.

Bond sighed, Q mostly just watching with amusement. “Whether you love her or not, being that public still isn’t popular,” he told his son drily. Teddy pouted a bit, and Q could only see him aged six, a petulant child through and through. Even nineteen years on, the extraordinary, incomparable feeling of being a father had never quite diminished, never died.

Now Teddy was an adult, Q had never been quite so indulgent towards him. He was so young and so old, all at once.

“ _You two_ were my age when…”

“I never said you didn’t love her!” Bond interjected exasperatedly. “The _only_ thing I’m asking is that you don’t get arrested for public indecency, because I won’t bail you out, on the grounds that you were an idiot.”

Teddy grimaced. “Good to know.”

“How did this crop up?” Q asked conversationally, levitating teabags into cups – a coffee for Bond – and pouring the water over it.

Bond retrieved the milk, while Teddy tried his damnedest to disappear. “John had a quiet word. _Apparently_ , Victoire and Teddy were in the _middle of Diagon Alley_ stopping barely short of shagging one another…”

“… were _not_ ,” Teddy interrupted indignantly, sulkily taking a sip of tea and surreptitiously Summoning more sugar.

Bond reached briefly for a hipflask that he no longer kept on him. Q just about noticed, just barely, but he would always notice it now, just as Bond would always shudder a hand close before remembering. Habit, but healing. Time hurts and heals in equal measure.

“I believe him, Ted, after the last time…”

“… I already _said_ I was sorry…”

“… and John’s scarred for life now, I think, you were outside his bloody clinic…”

“Out of interest,” Q interjected, before both of them got too worked up, “what is Victoire doing after Hogwarts?”

Teddy’s eyes widened. “We’re not having _that_ talk already?!”

Q snorted, and shook his head. “It’s fine,” he assured his now rather panicked looking son. “What subjects again? I know she’s Muggle Studies…”

“… yeah, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Ancient Runes and Potions,” Teddy ran through, making Bond smirk; practically the same as he had taken for NEWTs. For all the complaints about their habitual snogging, Bond couldn’t deny he was fond of Victoire.

“Speaking of Muggle Studies…”

Q groaned elaborately, thwarted in an attempt to take a mouthful of tea. “Don’t get me started. He’s being a bloody _nightmare_ …”

Sherlock had become Muggle Studies teacher after five years or so floating around Hogwarts aimlessly. In that time, he did an extraordinary amount of reading and research on magic, magical theories. Chemical research – including blowing up a varied number of things – was a firm favourite. Of course, he then got bored, and there was nobody better at Muggle Studies (except perhaps John) than him.

“I was going to visit,” Teddy piped in, as Bond stifled a smirk. “I miss him, and especially with Victoire still in Hogwarts…”

“Do _not_ use your uncle as an excuse,” Q interjected sharply; Teddy looked vaguely repentant, but only vaguely. “No visiting during term times, he’s going to have enough to deal with now Hamish is starting. If John hasn’t briefed him to be an absolute nightmare, I’ll eat my own wand…”

It had been three years before Sherlock told John.

In that time, John had understandably moved on with his life. Mycroft had ensured John had special Ministry dispensation to live and work in the Wizarding world; John was employed as a Healer in St Mungo’s, where he eventually met Mary Morstan.

Thirteen years later, they owned the first medical clinic in Wizarding history, in Diagon Alley. Molly Hooper accepted John’s offer of a job instantly, and between them, they were in business as Healing consultants, and the creators of some of the best healing and medicinal potions on the market.

“Mary mentioned that,” Bond confirmed, dunking a digestive into his coffee. “I think Hamish and Hugo are conspiring, Merlin help us all.”

“… putting that to one side,” Q continued, shooting Teddy a look. “I need to go into Hogwarts at some stage to visit him, so we can go together – and I’m warning you now, if I see you within fifty feet of Victoire, I’ll make sure you’re banned from the Hogwarts grounds during term time. For now, go to work, surely you’re late?”

“ _You are too_.”

“Act your age, not your shoe size.”

Teddy made an aggravated noise, and strode out of the room.

Q watched him go, before turning to Bond. “We should probably head off, the boy has a point,” he said lightly. “I’ve sent off the confirmation emails – did I tell you about Mycroft and double-oh one?”

“… no?”

“He’s insistent that a double-oh is needed on the Hogwarts Express, given that every child of the war bar Teddy are going to be in the same place at the same time. In short, he’s paranoid about Hamish.”

Neither Hamish nor Teddy were biologically related to Mycroft in the slightest. That had not prevented him from being the single most cloyingly overprotective uncle the world would ever encounter. Biology had nothing to do with it; John would always be a Holmes, in some way or another, and neither Mary nor John had any other family.

Mycroft adored his nephews. As he had told Q nineteen years previously, he would never have children, family, of his own; he pretended not to be lonely, and Q pretended to believe him, and Mycroft would remain thus. The Dark Mark shadowed his inner arm, hissing lividly in the moments Q almost forgot.

“He _has_ to stop going over my head,” Bond muttered. “Well. It’s fine, double-oh one only just got in from Ghana, she could do with a domestic mission – but tell Mycroft to stop doing this.”

“Tell him yourself!”

(Supposedly, Mycroft still only occupied a minor position in the Ministry. Some knew better.)

Bond grimaced; there was no way he was going to try and tell his brother-in-law what to do, regardless of the fact that Bond _technically outranked him_ these days.

“Ah, and I need to get Hamish a present…”

“I picked up a set of dress robes for him already,” Bond interjected; Q blinked in surprise, but accepted it all the same. “Well, John has terrible taste and Mary hates clothes shopping…”

“Not arguing,” Q grinned. “Okay, good. That’s sorted. I’ll see if I can get Mycroft over to Hogwarts, if we’re going over anyway…”

All in all, everything had gone remarkably well, in the end.

Nineteen years, since the War. Nineteen years since teaching, since Silva, since Voldemort himself and the hell that had gone with it.

Vesper Lynd was in Azkaban, and likely to remain there. Dementors no longer stalked the place; actual wizards guarded it, the place less torturous now for those imprisoned there. Vesper still made no sense to Q, and undoubtedly never would.

Vesper was gone, and that was all Q cared about.

Q and Draco became very close after the War ended. Draco was interviewed at length by the Ministry, cooperated entirely, was released without incident. In fact, he was a key member of the Unspeakables; people who had seen too much and wanted to understand, who could and had done things beyond what most are able.

Lucius Malfoy died in Azkaban one year and three months after the War. Draco did not speak for almost a fortnight.

Meanwhile, Q’s final lingering fears about Irene were assuaged in her marrying Molly Hooper. They made a lovely pair. Their daughter Alyssa was a devastatingly beautiful child, and looked set to always be thus.

Upstairs, Teddy was stomping. Teddy always stomped when he hadn’t got his own way. “The floor did nothing wrong!” Q yelled up the stairs; Teddy made an audible _argh_ and presumably cast a charm to muffle his footsteps, based on the abrupt change in noise levels. “I don’t know why he doesn’t just join the Weasley Wheezes, he’d fit right in…”

Bond snorted. “For the love of Merlin, don’t encourage him. I still blame Fred for the exploding pen incident.”

Q tried not to blush. That had been entirely his fault, actually, although Teddy had taken the rap for it. Occasionally parenting came with a hint of immorality. In Q’s defence, Teddy hadn’t been punished for it.

In his pocket, Q’s mobile rang. “Fuck it,” he muttered, and reached for it. “Hello Hermione… yes… I’ll be there in five minutes, promise, had to have a word with Teddy… damn… yes of course, call me when you’re back from dropping the kids off… just please don’t let Ron cook again… deal… perfect. See you in a bit.”

“Dinner?”

“Once the kids have been dispatched back to Hogwarts tomorrow,” Q nodded. “Harry and Draco may come along too; Harry’s dropping Scorpius off, Draco’s still dealing with whatever happened in the Time Turner room the other night…”

It had taken four years before Harry and Draco could stand to so much as share a room with one another. Now, their son Scorpius was starting Hogwarts, the same year as Hugo and Hamish. It promised to be interesting, if nothing else.

“… Also, I have _got_ to do the decent thing and catch up with Mycroft, he’s been overworking again…”

“Pot, kettle.”

“Piss off,” Q grinned, standing up and clicking his back out. “Ergh. I’m getting old.”

Bond raised an eyebrow. “By comparison I must be geriatric.”

“Just about,” Q nodded innocently, before all but pouncing at his husband, curling up around him and kissing him fiercely.

Nineteen years.

Teddy’s voice drawled from the doorway: “Oh, so _you’re_ allowed to be all over each other, then…”

All was well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe it is over.
> 
> To everybody who has supported throughout, you have my undying gratitude. Some - you know who you are! - have commented and read and stayed for pretty much every single chapter since this all began. Shipimpala started it all with a gifset, and now, here we are. Everybody who gave me thoughts, ideas, prompts. Everybody who left kudos. Everybody who criticised. Everybody who loved and cared and stayed.
> 
> Blimey.
> 
> I cannot thank you enough for the journey this has been. I have learnt so much. I have reclaimed my childhood. I have enjoyed every single second of it, and this story has seen a stupidly large amount of my life (and stolen a good amount of it too).
> 
> Final thanks to JKR herself (legend!), Ian Fleming, ACD (I'm so sorry mate, you wanted so badly for Sherlock to die...) and every single fanficcer from Sam Mendes (bring on Spectre...) to Gatiss (the greatest fanboy of them all). This is theirs, really, and all those who cultivate and expand the wonderful, brilliant world of creative and transformative works.
> 
> This story would have barely begun without Lex. It would certainly not be the story it is. In the course of this story we have travelled halfway around the world, gone through hell and back, and got engaged. Lex will forever be the driving force, and my muse.
> 
> I shall desist rambling. I hope the epilogue lived up to expectations, and I would love to hear any and all thoughts you may have.
> 
> Thank you, and good night. Jen.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> For Lex, as always.


End file.
